


A Billionaire Yankee in King Odin’s Court

by gloria_scott



Series: The Value of Sentiment [1]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Psychological Torture, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-18
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-18 23:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/566549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloria_scott/pseuds/gloria_scott
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Avengers. Loki may have been vanquished and his plans for world domination thwarted, but he had at least one last trick up his sleeve. As the tesseract engages to bring Thor and his wayward brother home, Tony Stark is unwittingly pulled along for the ride. He wakes up on the doorstep of Asgard, bound and gagged, in the body of his mortal enemy du jour. It is Tony who now must face the judgment of Odin's court and endure the punishment meant for Loki, all while trying to convince a thoroughly jaded and mistrustful Thor that he is not who he appears to be, and attempting to find his way back to earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first story of what will be a three-story series, and was inspired by [this prompt](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/6565.html?thread=11657381#t11657381) on the avengerkink meme. 
> 
> Thanks to catchoo152 for the beta!
> 
> Digital art created by azuremonkey can be found [here.](http://thefixedfoot.livejournal.com/41094.html?mode=reply#add_comment)

** **

**Prologue**

“Beautiful day for a bon voyage party.”

Tony strolled over to where Bruce was standing with Cap and Dr. Selvig. It really was a beautiful day; the sun was out, warm but not too hot, and with just the hint of a breeze rustling the newly green trees. Just one of those perfect May in Central Park days that always seemed to come and go too fast. The somber faces of the group assembled around him offered a cloudy contrast to the weather. To be honest, Tony wasn’t exactly feeling like Mr. Sunshine himself.

He set the silver case he had been carrying down on the ground and knelt to open it.

Bruce flashed a tight smile and knelt down beside him. “Yeah, couldn’t ask for better.”

“I’m surprised you got here on time,” Cap said, never taking his eyes off of the tesseract as Bruce gingerly lifted it out of the case and into its shiny new housing. “Isn’t it more your style to be fashionably late?”

Tony let the jab go. It was pretty weak, and he just wasn’t in the mood to spar. Not today.

“Are you kidding?” he replied. “I wouldn’t have missed this closing act for the world.”

Once the doomsday cube was safely tucked away, Tony let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Thor took the package from Selvig and turned to face his brother, Loki, who stood chastened but still defiant in his Asgard-issued shackles and muzzle. It was a good look on him.

Tony took up his position to watch the fireworks. Natasha leaned over to whisper something to Clint, and the two of them sniggered like a couple of high school mean girls. For once he himself didn't feel like making light of the situation. The bastard killed Agent...Phil...and countless others. Hopefully he would get what was coming to him, whatever that was. Thor had been maddeningly vague about Asgardian penal codes when asked. He seriously doubted big brother would allow for a death sentence, though. The most Tony could probably hope for is that they would lock him in a cold and windowless cell and throw away the key.

As Thor and Loki each grabbed an end of the tesseract’s housing and prepared to go, Tony’s unease grew. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they hadn’t seen the last of Mr. Mayhem. The thing about locking evil things up is…well, they have a tendency to get loose eventually. This wasn’t over. Not really, truly, once and for all over, anyway. Hopefully, with the lifespans of gods approaching the immortality mark, he and the rest of the Avengers would be long gone before the world had to deal with this particular nasty piece of work again.

Ah well, this chapter was over at least, and he could get on with thinking about reconstruction of the tower. Pepper had almost convinced him to give each Avenger their own digs there, but then they’d never get rid of them. Tony shrugged. Maybe that would be okay.

With a twist of Thor’s wrist, the tesseract engaged. He and Loki were each enveloped in a shimmering column of blue-white light, which rapidly coalesced and then began flowing upward into the sky.

 _Huh, kind of like a transporter beam_ , Tony mused. _Not the sparkly white noise of the original series; more Next Generation. Hey, that could be the next big thing for Stark Industries. Once we’ve mastered the whole clean energy thing, we could turn to instantaneous travel. We never got the jet packs or flying cars we were promised, but ‘beam me up Scotty’ would be way better anyway._

Tony’s mind was off and running with this grand new idea so he didn’t see the slight distortion developing in the middle of the energy field around Loki, the only warning that something might be wrong.

 _Maybe Thor's lady friend, Dr. Foster, would be interested in a collaboration_.

A flash of light cut loose from the central beam around the tesseract and struck Tony squarely in the chest. He felt himself falling backwards, but he never hit the ground.

**Chapter 1**

Bright, white light resolved to utter darkness. The pain in his chest, like the focused impact of a thousand shards of glass, disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

Tony had never really thought about how it might feel to be pulled headfirst through a keyhole. Why would he? But that was pretty much what whatever had just happened to him felt like. And for the record, he wasn’t too keen on ever feeling like that again.

His senses returned to him one by one. There was a roaring in his ears that muffled and distorted the sounds around him as if he were underwater. A steady wind ruffled his hair, carrying with it a hint of brine. He moved his head slightly, wincing as pain radiated in waves from his temples. Once the spinning world around him slowed from a break-neck 78 to a mellower 33 rpm, he felt a hard surface solidify at his back.

A voice boomed through the darkness, jarring him almost into full consciousness.

“On your feet!”

He opened his eyes and blinked against the garish light that filled his vision. He couldn’t quite make sense of what he was looking at. The sky, maybe? Some clouds? A mountain? The colors were all wrong, as if he’d left his boring old black and white Kansas behind for a Technicolor Oz. The roaring in his ears receded to the rush and thrum of a vast waterfall that he couldn’t see.

He tried to ask, “What the hell hit me?” and “Where the hell am I?” at roughly the same time, but his mouth and brain hadn’t quite synched up yet. What came out was something more like, “What the hell am I?”

Or it would have, if he had been able to move his lips.

He reached up clumsily and pawed at his face, running his fingers over the jointed metal covering him from nose to chin. The clink of metal alerted him to the cuffs and chains that bound his wrists as well.

“Heed me. I said rise!” The voice was close, right above him in fact, and sounded slightly less boomy and more familiar to his ears. A strong hand grasped him by the arm and hauled him up as if he were no lighter than a ragdoll.

Tony found he had roughly the coordination of a ragdoll as he tried to stand on legs that seemed at once too long and made of linguini. The hand on his arm remained until he had stopped wobbling back and forth. As it withdrew, his head swiveled drunkenly to follow it. He caught a flash of crimson cape and golden hair, and finally his eyes focused on a relatively familiar, but not so friendly, face.

“I am in no mood for your games, brother. Now move!” The hand that had recently steadied him now turned him roughly by the shoulder and shoved him in the back. He stumbled forward, tripping over his own feet that felt unfamiliar and too large. He fell heavily onto his hands – also unfamiliar and too large, with slender, uncalloused fingers. When he saw the embossed gold vambraces covering his wrists and heard the creak of leather as he shifted his weight, he gritted his teeth.

 _Son of a bitch. That little shit of a god had one last trick up his sleeve after all_.

Tony shook his head to try and clear the last of the pain and fog away, and got back on his feet. He fixed his eyes on Thor’s face and waved his hands wildly.

“No no no, it’s me, Tony…Tony Stark…not your asshole brother!” he tried to say, but a muffled hum was all the noise the muzzle allowed to escape. In answer, Thor grasped him by the hair, forcing his head back and pulling him off balance again.

“I said enough! Walk! Or shall I carry you as a maiden to add to your disgrace?”

There was nothing for it but to walk as well as he could on his (no, Loki’s) still unsteady legs, though he was man enough to admit he really wouldn’t have minded a piggyback ride with the way his head was still spinning. He made a mental note to talk to Thor later about his blatant sexism, but right now he needed to stay focused on data gathering. It was no easy task; he was still dazzled and disoriented, and he had to keep his eyes on the ground to keep from getting vertigo.

From the brief glimpses he got when he dared to raise his head, he could tell that they were on a large, elevated platform open to the sky. Against the backdrop of blue sky and red-streaked clouds, staggered peaks of gold glinted in the sun, which had either just risen or was about to set. It took a moment for Tony to realize that what he was looking at was a building of some sort. A palace fit for the gods.

_Huh, looks like I did land in Oz after all. And we just skipped the whole yellow brick road bullshit and landed right at the gates of the Emerald Palace. How convenient._

They came to the bottom of a seemingly endless flight of stone steps leading up to a set of impossibly large doors. Tony groaned at the thought of having to climb them, but Thor was undaunted and pulled him along at a quick pace. When they finally reached the top the doors swung open for them on noiseless hinges. They stepped into a wide entry way and were immediately flanked by two armored and sizable guards. Tony looked them up and down.

 _I guess everything’s bigger in Asgard_.

As they walked they passed by a variety of folks – guards, servants, and, Tony supposed, other visitors and residents. All grew quiet and stared as they passed. Thor paid no attention, guiding him deep into the heart of the palace, until the crowds began to thin out and the only company they had was the echo of their own feet on the polished stone floor.

Before long they came to a sort of crossroads where four broad corridors met, empty but for a pair of heavily armed warriors who stood as if waiting for them. The one on the left was a big guy with a sizable beard and the belly of a true epicure. The blond fellow at his side had the most foppishly ridiculous facial hair that Tony let out a snort of laughter. They nodded a greeting to Thor, and the big one shot Tony a dark look from under his unruly brows.

“Welcome back, my lord,” he said to Thor. “We have missed you at table. I cannot wait to hear the tale of this most recent…adventure.”

“I am afraid you will have to wait a bit longer good Volstagg, for I have other matters to attend to first.” Thor handed him the tesseract. “Take this to the vault and see that it is secured.”

Tony watched as Gimli and Prince Charming bowed and then retreated down one of the corridors with his ticket home.

“Come,” Thor said, his voice somewhat less stern than it had been. “He is waiting for us.”

_Well that sounds ominous._

They continued on.

Tony wasn’t panicking; not yet, anyway. Sure he was on another world, or in another realm or however the hell it worked, but if he could get here, then logically it followed that he could get back. And so what if he looked like Loki, a mentally unhinged bastard guilty of genocidal war crimes that were about to land him on the wrong side of the Asgardian justice system? If he could just get the damn muzzle off his face he could explain what had happened, though not how it had happened; he’d have to give that some more thought. If he could talk to Thor, everything would be all right and they could just take a return trip with the tesseract. Getting him back to _himself_ might be a bit trickier, though.

They entered a long, dark antechamber, lit only by torches set into marble columns a couple of braziers set at intervals in the middle of the walkway.  Panels of rich gold cloth hung from the ceiling, swaying in the breeze that came in from an open terrace running the length of the room. As they passed each panel, Tony caught glimpses of sky darkening to the color of the sea before a storm. Night was coming on.

At the far end of the antechamber there was a set of ornate golden doors that opened onto what must have been a throne room because, hey, throne – a gaudy golden number set upon a high dais and flanked by what looked like a miniature Viking ship. Also gold. Perhaps Odin and Donald Trump had the same interior designer. Somebody really needed to tell them that less was more when using precious metals as accent pieces.

The throne itself was empty. Before it stood an old, white-haired man dressed in a heavy gold brocade tunic, proving that there was about as much variation in sartorial taste as in décor here.  His back was half turned to them, head bowed, not stirring at their approach. As they drew near, Thor called out to him.

“Father, I have returned with him as you commanded.”

Tony’s feet faltered a moment when the old man turned and pinned him like a bug under the sharp glare of his one good eye.

_Uh oh. Daddy dearest looks more in the mood to pummel than to parley._

Another shove from Thor sent him stumbling forward again. He steadied himself without falling this time and continued walking until he was within three paces of the dais.

The old man walked slowly and heavily down the steps and stood in front of Tony, regarding him for a long moment. He laid a gnarled and battle-scarred hand on Tony’s shoulder.

“Welcome home, my son.”

Beneath the paternal, kindly tone lay an edge so keen it nearly sliced through Tony’s self-assured bravado. This wasn’t going to be easy.

***

“Long have I wished to gaze upon your face again; to tell you…”Odin paused and a rolling cloud of grief passed over his features before he turned away. “I only wish it had happened under happier circumstances.” He walked out to the terrace that bordered this chamber as well, and leaned on the parapet. A nudge from Thor indicated that they should follow.

The three of them stood looking out over the city now steeped in deep twilight, beyond which lay a vast body of water. The last red sliver of sun dipped below the horizon, and the gibbous moon, easily three times the size of earth’s, hung low in the sky on their left. Tony couldn’t wrap his mind around half of what he was seeing. The scale of the city structures was boggling, not to mention the gravity-defying islands of rock upon which they were built that hovered in mid-air.

_How does that even work?_

“We are well beyond the indulgence of your mean-spirited, but mostly harmless, pranks, Loki.” Odin finally spoke again, bringing Tony back from his reverie. “I understand what a shock it must have been to find out about your _Jötun_ heritage the way you did. Perhaps I should have told you sooner. I will shoulder my share of the blame for that.”

It took all of Tony’s willpower not to roll his eyes at Odin’s, no doubt very touching, speech. So the whole invasion and narcissistic power tripping had been the result of a temper tantrum thrown by a spoiled child with daddy issues? Not that he would know anything about that, of course. At least he had channeled his own abandonment issues into philanthropic works and fighting bad guys. Eventually.

“However, that does not excuse your…overreaction,” Odin continued.

_You’re damn skippy it doesn’t._

Odin turned to face him again. “The truth is still only known to the family and Heimdall. If you will repent of your actions and atone for them, if you will do service to repair the damage you have done to Jötunheim and to Midgard, you may return to us. It would then be your choice to reveal the truth however and to whomever you chose.”

The searching way that Odin now looked at him held an abundance of hope, mingled with wariness and grief. It made Tony uneasy, like he was an interloper intruding on a deeply personal moment. Maybe for Loki this could have been a very touching family reunion and just the validation of daddy’s love and attention that he evidently needed, but Tony wanted none of it. He tapped at the muzzle. Odin gave a curt nod and Thor removed it.

“I’m not your son.” Tony startled at the sound of Loki’s voice coming out of his mouth. Well, it was more like Loki’s voice doing a bad impression of Tony Stark. Thor’s eyes narrowed and he stepped forward, arm poised to strike. Odin held up a hand to stop him.

“Regardless of whose blood flows in your veins, Loki, I claimed you as an Odinson, and I have not relinquished that claim. Not yet.”

“No, look,” Tony tried again. “I didn’t mean ‘I’m not your son’ in a Daddy took the T-Bird away so I’m-throwing a tantrum sort of way. I mean literally…I am not Loki. I am Tony E. Stark, billionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht. And half of lower Manhattan, but that’s not important right now. I just helped your other son – Golden Boy over here – route a full-scale invasion led by Loki Blacksheep. Come on, Thor, tell him!”

“Loki, stop this now,” Thor growled.

“Just hear me out. I don’t know how it happened, but Loki pulled a switcheroo with the tesseract. Maybe he left a back door open…” _or a keyhole_ “…or something. I haven’t figured it out yet but give me some time and I…”

Thor took a step towards him. “Loki, I swear that if you do not desist in telling this pathetic lie I will cut out your tongue.”

“Whoa, harsh!” Tony said, suddenly reassessing his chances of talking his way out of this one. How was he supposed to convince everyone that the lying liar wasn’t lying _this_ time?

“Okay, I’ll prove it.” He didn’t really know how, so he said the first thing that came into his mind. “Ask me something that only Tony Stark would know.”

Yes, he was falling back on the old how-to-tell-the-doppelganger-from-the-real-boy trope, but what the hell else could he do? He needed to buy more time to think, to find the right leverage that might sway things in his favor.

“How am I to know what only Tony Stark knows?” Thor snapped.

“Right, that actually works better with people who aren’t complete strangers from an alien planet that I just met like, five days ago. Really regretting I didn’t take some more time out between kicking Chitauri ass and saving the world to get to know you better, big guy. I’ll make it up to you, I swear. But come on,” Tony pleaded, “there must be something the two of us shared. A moment? Didn’t we have a moment? Shakespeare in the park? The crack about the drapes?”

“You were there, watching from the escarpment. You heard it all.”

“Oh come on, he would have had to have ears like a...right, a god, okay. But what about…”

“Enough!” Odin bellowed. “Get him out of my sight.”

“No come on, this is important,” Tony said, dodging Thor’s grasp and shuffling back a few steps. “In the helicarrier, what did I call you? Loki wasn’t there. Do you remember? Point break. Point break!”

“That proves nothing,” said Thor, reaching for him again.

Tony sidestepped him and kept moving. “Okay, call up SHIELD. Get a message to Pepper, let me talk to her, she’ll know it’s me.” He stopped and his heart careened in his chest. “Oh shit, Pepper! He’s with Pepper! We’ve got to go back. Now!”

He turned to run back the way they had come, stumbling head-long into the guards who had been waiting near the door. Thor came up behind and grabbed him by the throat, throwing him back so that he skidded the length of the floor and almost cracked his head on the lowest step of the dais.

Before he could right himself Thor was on top of him and throttling him again.

“Damn it, Thor we don’t have time…” Tony wheezed, before the muzzle was set in place again.

Tony continued to struggle but there was no escaping Thor and the guards. The muzzle muffled his pleas for them to listen and, as they continued on through winding corridors and down countless stairs, it muffled his cursing of them, their faces, their mothers, and their mothers’ faces. They dragged him down to the very bowels of the palace, finally dropping him in a dimly lit cell.

Thor stood a moment at the door. “You will have time to think on what you have done, brother. I suggest you use it wisely.”

Tony got up and made a run for it but it was too late. The door closed. He was alone, muzzled and shackled in a bare and windowless cell. He’d gotten his wish for Loki, after all. Fortunately for him, it wasn’t cold.


	2. Chapter 2

Tony stood in the middle of the cell, breathing hard and trying to bring a semblance of order to his chaotic thoughts. Uppermost in his mind was Pepper and how she could be – right at this moment – unwittingly in Loki’s clutches. He was less concerned about Bruce, who had taken him up on the offer to stay at Stark Tower for a while. Loki had been no match for him in his godly form; he’d hardly be any trouble in Tony’s banged up body, even with the suit. On the other hand, his banged up body wouldn’t withstand much further banging up.

_Oh, please be careful with the goods, Green Guy. There needs to be something left of me to come home to, once I figure out how to get there._

Still, the thought that Bruce was with Pepper eased his mind enough to allow him to think about his own immediate problems. Turning slowly, he made a 360 degree assessment of his surroundings. Four walls made of some unknown dark stone-like material.

 _At least it’s not gold_.

What light there was cast the room in an eerie twilight. He couldn’t discern a light source; there seemed to be a dull glow emanating from the very top of the walls where they met the ceiling. He paced the dimensions of the cell and estimated it to be nearly twenty square feet. It was spacious yet beyond Spartan, without even a rough cot to lie down on and nothing resembling a sink or toilet. Maybe gods didn’t require the same attention to bodily functions. At least, he hoped not.

He ran his hands along the walls but could feel no joint or seam in the smooth stone, not even where the door had been, though he soon became disoriented and could no longer tell exactly where that was. Leaning his back against a wall he slid down to the floor. His fingertips searched over every inch of the muzzle to try and find a way to pull it off or release the locking mechanism without the key fob that was currently in Thor’s possession.  When that failed, he let out a frustrated grunt and leaned back, running his hands through his hair.

How did this happen? Tony retraced every interaction he’d had with Loki from the bon voyage party in the park all the way back to…

_Shawarma!_

He sat up with a jolt.

Of course! It had to be. Gods apparently do eat (which didn’t bode well for the no need for a commode thing). Thor had certainly packed away more than his share at the shawarma joint – Tony had stopped counting at six – and he’d insisted on bringing a doggy bag back for his kid brother. Trying to take over the world was hungry work, after all.

When the gang had returned, Tony let them crash in one of his private lounges that were conveniently tucked away on practically every floor. While everyone else settled in and waited for the food coma to hit, Thor stood by the door, hesitating and fiddling with the bag.

“You’re not afraid of him, are you?” Tony had asked.

Thor shook his head. “No, of course not. It’s just that…he harbors such anger and resentment towards me that he may not accept anything from me, even if it means that he should go hungry.”

“Then let him starve.”

Thor had given him such a wounded baby harp seal look that Tony went against his better, more self-serving nature.

“Fine. I’ll take it to him,” he said, grabbing the bag.

Thor smiled and tossed him a small metal key fob. “You’ll need that as well.”

After Loki had finished that drink he’d asked for, he had remained in a mostly empty server room under lock and key (and shackle and muzzle and JARVIS’ watchful cams).  If there had been a broom closet Tony would have set him up there, but this would have to do.

He hesitated before he opened the door. “Hey JARVIS, how’s our esteemed guest behaving? Any trouble?”

“None at all, sir. He hasn’t moved in over an hour.”

Tony wasn’t sure if that made him feel any better or not. He shrugged and opened the door.

Loki sat on the floor at the far end of the room, the chain binding the shackles on his wrists looped through a metal server rack. It wasn’t really enough to keep him there; he could have easily torn it up if he’d wanted to, but he was – at least for the moment – content to merely sit with his head down, eyes closed, legs drawn up in front of him.

“Hey, Princess Monoloki, you awake?” Tony called from just inside the door. He held out the bag and gave it a little shake. “Got something for you.”

Loki opened his eyes and stared balefully at him without raising his head.

Tony ventured a bit further into the room and closed the door.

“Hungry?”

No response, just those watchful, predatory eyes following his movements. Every instinct Tony had said to get the hell out of there. So of course, he didn’t. Instead, he sauntered closer in a way that he hoped conveyed his casual indifference to the threat this so-called god posed. He reached down and touched the key fob to the muzzle. It disengaged and he pulled it away.

Loki’s lips were moving, muttering something so low Tony couldn’t make it out.

“I’m sorry, what was that, your highness? You’ll have to speak up,” Tony said, not really daring to lean any closer.

Quick as a snake, Loki struck.  Tony dropped the bag and staggered backwards out of reach. On the back of his hand a jagged gouge dripped blood.

“What the hell? No biting – or scratching – the hand that feeds you.  Bad dog! No shawarma for you!” Loki flashed a feral smile and snatched the bag up before Tony could retrieve it. He drew out one of the sandwiches and sniffed, wrinkling his nose in disdain, but he devoured it as handily as his brother had done.

Tony backed away towards the door, his pulse pounding in his ears. He looked at the blood welling and dripping from his hand and put it to his mouth, tasting the tang of iron. No good deed goes unpunished. He weighed the muzzle in his other hand. Thor could deal with getting this back on him. He tossed it roughly onto another rack and hightailed it out the door.

That must have been it. Whatever Loki had been muttering, maybe it had been an incantation or something. Thor had said he had some magical ability, and Tony himself had witnessed the cloning trick in Germany. Maybe the cut on his hand had been a mark of some sort, and he’d used the energy of the tesseract somehow to pull it all together. Not that that should have been possible according to the laws of physics and biology and common fucking sense. Because, really – body snatching? It was the stuff of Saturday morning B-grade science fiction movies. Yet here he was. He only hoped Pepper and the others were safe and had caught on to his evil twin by now and subdued him.

He spent the next few hours – as far as he could tell, it could have been days – trying to come up with a plan to get Thor on his side. This was his fault after all. If he hadn’t had such a soft spot in his heart (and his head) for his little brother, none of this would have happened.

Eventually, exhaustion overtook him and he curled up in a corner of the cell. He fell into an uneasy sleep and dreamed of a lightless void, and falling, and a strong hand that reached out of the darkness to stop him, and a relief that was short lived.

***

Tony was awake when the guards finally returned for him. He was escorted back up into the inhabited parts of the palace, returning to the throne room where he’d had his audience with Odin however long ago it had been. This time the chamber was full – standing room only full – with gawkers come to see the wayward son of Odin get what was coming to him. Tony couldn’t really blame them. He would have been first in line for tickets to that show himself.

The buzz and drone of conversation grew louder as he entered and passed by the crowd lining his path on either side. Some of the faces seemed hostile, but most just looked curious. That was good; at least he wasn’t starting out with too much of a deficit in the public opinion department.

When they reached the center of the room they stopped. The guards let go of him and retreated back a few paces. Before him on the throne sat Odin, decked out in full regalia, which included a golden helm sporting both horns _and_ wings. They certainly did have a thing for appendaged head gear in this family. On the king’s left stood a woman, regal and beautiful. The wife, Frigga, if Tony’s bare knowledge of Norse mythology was to be trusted. As she gazed at him her face contained all the sadness of a mother’s loss, and he had to look away. Thor stood to the left of the king, several steps down on the dais with a contingent of a half-dozen or so of Asgard’s finest gods and goddesses beside him. The King’s Court, Tony presumed.

Center of attention, surrounded by an audience – it was Tony’s natural habitat. So why did he feel less like a rock star and more like a fly in a trap? He was definitely off his game and out of his depth. With no gadgets, no JARVIS, no suit, and, most importantly, not enough information about this place and these people, he didn’t much like his chances of being able to turn the situation to his advantage. Getting through to Thor really was his only hope.

He tried to catch Thor’s eye, silently willing him to pay attention. Thor held his gaze for a moment, then looked away, barely masking his anger and disappointment. Great. The big lug would choose now of all times to finally shore up that soft spot.

Odin stood and the crowd fell silent.

“Asgard has ever been a beacon of light across the nine realms, for at its foundation lie the values of wisdom, strength and justice. The laws of Asgard are the very pillars that uplift and sustain that light, and they must be obeyed, especially by those of the House of Odin. We lead as much by the example of our actions as by our might. When any one of us fails in our duty to uphold the law – even were he a prince – he must be held accountable. I therefore call forth Skaði, to deliver swift and fair judgment in the case before us today.” 

A tall woman with pale skin and hair so blonde it was almost white stepped forward from where she had stood at Thor’s side. Skaði bowed to Odin and then descended the dais. She approached Tony and began to speak, projecting her voice so that all those assembled might hear.

“Loki Odinson, you have been brought before the All-Father and this Court to answer for your crimes.”

Although she addressed herself to him, her words seemed to be meant more for the assembled throng. Tony couldn’t shake the feeling that the trial had already taken place off screen without him, and he had shown up just in time for the sentencing. Things just kept getting better and better.

“First, you are guilty of inciting war with Jötunheim and attempting to annihilate that entire realm and all of its inhabitants. Your actions led directly to the destruction of the Bifrost, and the loss of that ancient and critical source of Asgard’s power.”

As she spoke, images began to play in the air above their heads, like a holographic recounting of Loki’s greatest hits. The images were unfamiliar and confusing, but what Tony could make out looked something like a giant laser beam blowing up a glacier. 

“You are guilty of bringing war to Midgard, a realm that we have sworn to protect.”

Tony actually recognized some of the images now since he’d actually been there. He saw himself being thrown out of a ninety-story window. He pointed wildly and tried to get Thor’s attention, but was roundly ignored.

“You are guilty of attempting to kill, or at least to cause grievous harm, to your own brother.”

Images played of Loki dropping Thor from the helicarrier in the Hulk tank, and stabbing him on the rooftop of Stark Tower.

_Well that just takes sibling rivalry to a whole new level. So glad I’m an only child._

“You are guilty of allowing a contingent of Frost Giants into the realm on two occasions, the first resulting in the deaths of the vault guards – valiant warriors all who had done you no wrong. The second, and most unforgivable, threatened the life of Odin himself.” 

Even though it was clear from the not-so-instant replay that Loki himself had killed the Frost Giant before Odin was harmed, this really wasn’t looking good for him. Skaði beckoned to Thor, who came down from the dais. He removed the muzzle and stepped back, never once meeting Tony’s eyes.

“Speak, traitor, if you have anything to say in your defense,” Skaði said.

Tony rubbed at his face where the muzzle had been and took a deep breath. “Well, actually I did have a speech prepared, but screw it; I probably wouldn’t believe a word of it either if I were you. I just need you to know – for the record – that I’m not who you think I am. I’m Tony Stark, the guy in the red suit in that little peep show of yours,” he said, pointing up to where the images had played just moments before. “Interesting technology by the way, I’d love to know how you captured all of that…but your boy Loki is still on earth sleeping in _my_ bed and playing with _my_ toys.” He turned to Thor and pressed his hands together, pleading.  “Thor, buddy, you’ve gotta help me. Please. At least try to check out my story before you do anything we’ll both regret.”

Thor’s face was impassible. He said nothing as he stepped away and turned his back.

“Oh come on, don’t be that way. You’re all I’ve got here, man. You’re all I’ve got!” The jagged edge of panic in his voice only compounded the panic Tony felt. The walls were closing in and he could no longer see a way out.

“Silence!” Skaði commanded, and the words dried up in his throat like ash and choked him. “You have said your piece, now know your punishment. If my counsel had prevailed, you would have been bound to a stone by your own entrails with venom dripping into your eyes for all eternity.” Something in the way she looked at him left no doubt in Tony’s mind that this was not an exaggeration.

“However,” she continued, “the All-Father in his wisdom and mercy has extended you clemency. So this now is your fate. You are hereby declared the living dead, no longer of Asgard or the House of Odin, condemned to haunt the halls of this palace in darkness and in silence. None shall speak to you or acknowledge your presence in any way. And hear me, all who are assembled here,” she added, turning to address the crowd, “if any should disobey the order to shun this murderous traitor, they shall suffer the punishment originally intended for him.”

Skaði approached him, drawing three thick cords of twisted gold between her fingers.

“No wait,” Tony said, backing away from her. The guards stepped up and grabbed him by the arms, holding him fast. “You’re making a big mistake. Thor! Please, listen to me! It was the sha…”

“Bind!” She made a casting gesture with her hand and the golden cords shot towards him, whip-stitching his lips and eyelids closed.

Tony’s muffled screams were all that could be heard in the silent hall.


	3. Chapter 3

The guards had hauled him away and dumped him here, wherever here was. Not back to his cell; he was sure of that at least. They had traveled up, not down, from the throne room to get here. Tony had the bumps and bruises on his shins where they’d banged against at least a hundred stairs to prove it. They had removed the chains, but the cuffs on his wrists remained.

The footsteps of the guards retreated. A door opened and closed.

The room was silent but for his labored breathing. Crawling forward a few feet on hands and knees, he tried to find something, anything, to help anchor him. There was nothing. He was floating in empty space, unable to get his bearings, blind, mute, and for all he knew, alone. It was like being adrift on the open ocean, no land in sight, no hope of rescue. His heart kicked into a gallop and he began to hyperventilate – made all the more difficult by the bindings on his mouth.  He was suffocating, head dipping below the swell of the waves. The more he panicked, the harder it was to breathe. And the harder it was to breathe, the more he panicked.  Still on his knees, he leaned forward and pressed his head against the cool floor, not caring what he looked like or if he had an audience. If he did, they could kiss his godly ass.

He tried to corral his mind as it bucked like a bronco with a habanero shoved up its keister.

_Whoa, boy. Steady now. This isn’t helping._

_Slow, deep breaths._

_One…two…three…_

He rolled over onto his back and lay there counting breaths until his chest stopped heaving. The sweat had begun to cool on his forehead and he passed a hand over his brow to wipe it away. It took several long minutes before he could steel himself to trace his trembling fingers along the smooth, taught cords binding his eyes. His stomach churned and he may have let out something like a whimper (which he’d never admit to) as he traced the lines of the stitching over his lips.

_Fuck me. This is bad._

He would have liked to reassure himself at this point. That would have been nice. Tell himself, ‘Hey, self, it’s not so bad. You’ve gotten yourself out of worse scrapes than this. Chin up.’

But it was, and he hadn’t. There was no competition. This was – hands down – the worst scrape.

However, he wasn’t going to get out of it by going all _High Anxiety_ and falling to pieces.

He rolled over onto hands and knees again, picked a direction, and crawled with his hands splayed far in front of him to check for obstacles. Within a few yards or so he found a wall – as cool and smooth as the floor had been. He sat with his back to it; feeling slightly more grounded, he formulated a plan.

_Find the end of the wall._

_Begin there._

_Conduct a search pattern._

_Simple grid._

_Crawl forward – touch everything in your path._

_Memorize it._

_Keep going until you reach the far wall._

_Move one foot over._

_Crawl, touch, memorize._

_Repeat until you’ve mapped the whole room._

In this way, Tony explored every nook, cranny and alcove of his surroundings. The room he was in seemed to be a sitting room, since the only furniture he came upon was the sitting kind – mostly chairs and plush, cushioned sofa-like things. He found the door the guards had left through and another at the opposite end of the room that opened onto an inner chamber. Once he’d finished with the first room, he returned to this second door and began the process over again, stopping and lying down on the floor to rest wherever he was so that he wouldn’t lose his place.

This second room held a bed, some more sitting furniture, and two more doors. One led out to a garden or courtyard of sorts. He could feel the sun on his face and smell green when he opened it. The other room may have been a bathroom, judging by the sound of running water and the echo-y, bathroomy feel. He left these unexplored for the moment, choosing to finish with the bedroom first.

He continued his crawl. In a small alcove he found a table with a large, what felt to be wooden, box on top. He opened it and reached in. His fingers brushed several somethings made of metal, cool and smooth and…

_Ow!_

Sharp. He pulled his hand away from the source of pain and pressed his bleeding finger into his thigh.

 _Knives. Perfect_.

He reached in more carefully this time and drew one out. The curved hilt fit perfectly in his hand. Running a finger along the flat of the blade he judged its length to be about six inches. He hesitated a moment, then guided the point to his lips with his free hand. The stitched cording severed easily, but only for a moment. The ends wove themselves together again and cinched down tighter than before.

_Fucking magic._

Tony tossed the knife in the direction of the box and heard a clang as it fell onto the tabletop. Whatever. He was too exhausted to care. It felt like he had been at this for days. There were still the bathroom and garden to explore, but he would deal with those later. He groped his way over to the bed and crawled into it.

In his dreams, a chill wind blew over a barren, icy wasteland. He trudged through drifts and up slippery rock faces, searching for something that he knew he would never find.

***

After thoroughly exploring the suite of rooms on his hands and knees, he now had a mental image of the floor plan that included all the major landmarks: doorways, steps, bed, divan and various other soft furnishings, armoires, and the waterfall bathtub shower…thing. Whatever it was entailed a never-ending cascade of fresh water that spilled into a deep stone basin, and then through an outlet in the wall into the garden where it joined a small stream. Tony really wished he could see it, because when he got back to New York he was so putting one in the penthouse. The toilet still eluded him, though. There were several fixtures of unknown function in the vicinity of the bath that were candidates, but he wasn’t willing to bet money on any of them yet.

With the floor plan completed, it was time to graduate to bipedal locomotion again. He mapped pathways between each landmark and practiced walking them over and over, until he could navigate the whole space with a minimum of bumping into things or tripping on steps.

_Okay that’s done. What’s next?_

On a whim, he decided to try the door that led to the outer corridor. He hadn’t bothered with it while he’d been engrossed with finding his way around; he’d just assumed it would be locked. The handle turned easily, and the door swung outward without a sound.

_Interesting._

Tony poked his head out just beyond the door frame and listened. The corridor was quiet. If he had company they weren’t keen on introducing themselves. He ventured out cautiously and took a few steps forward, keeping his right shoulder in contact with the wall. He stopped and turned 90 degrees, then walked forward counting his steps, hands outstretched, until his fingers made contact with the wall on the other side. Eighteen paces.  Turning his shoulder to the wall again he took a few more steps, then turned to cross the corridor again – a little less tentatively this time – and ended up at his chamber doors.

Throughout this operation, silence seemed to stretch the length of the corridor on either side of him. Still, Tony felt that fuzzy prickling at the back of his neck that alerted him to the nearby presence of someone or several someones – he couldn’t be sure. No one attempted to hamper his movements, so he turned his shoulder to the wall again and started counting paces. Ninety-seven steps before he came upon empty air at his side. He turned to the right, shoulder to wall again, and continued on. As he moved, the suspicion that a definite someone was watching him was confirmed. Footsteps halted every time he paused, and started again when he continued.

_So they have a guard tailing me. Makes sense. If I were in charge of Loki-sitting I’d probably keep a collar and leash on him, too. A shock collar…or maybe one of those ones with the pinchy prongs._

He made his way slowly along, keeping track of every turn and doorway he came across, and memorizing the number of paces between them.  It was when he’d left his chambers far behind and had entered a part of the palace with more activity that he started to realize the full horror of Loki’s punishment. Sure it was better than a face-full of acid for all eternity, but only just. Apart from the blindness, which obviously sucked, he was robbed of one of his greatest assets – the gift of gab. Loki may have been known for his silver tongue, but Tony’s was platinum. Diamond studded. With an adamantium core. Not that he was trying to compete or anything. Just add that to the list of disturbing similarities between them. Unfortunately what that meant was that the worst punishment that could be devised for Loki was also the worst for him.

But that was just the tip of the Titanic-sinking iceberg. Wherever he went, voices fell silent. As he approached, footsteps retreated. It was like he had a force field around him actively dampening sound and repelling everyone.

He had been condemned to a sort of banishment _in situ_ , which was both brilliant and diabolical. Of course they couldn’t just banish Loki outright, sending him away to wreak who knows what havoc. If they had cast him out, they would have had no control over him. A snake in the grass is really only dangerous when you can’t see it, after all.  So this was the compromise. It was like being in solitary without the confinement – and that shit makes people crazy.

Tony stopped and leaned against the wall under the weight of this realization.  

For as long as he could remember he had prided himself on being a lone wolf, lone gun, army of one, whatever. But that was a lie; it always had been. There were people in his life that he depended on every day – Pepper, Rhodey, JARVIS (he was people, too, as far as Tony was concerned).  Even though they’d just met, he thrived on his interactions with Bruce, who challenged him intellectually and Cap, who challenged him morally. Only a week or so into this hell and his mind was already revving out of control with nothing of substance to occupy it.

His mind – that was truly his greatest asset. He couldn’t afford to lose that as well. He needed something to do, some sort of challenge.

There was really only one thing he could do at this point that would be both useful and challenging – make a mental map of the entire palace to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Who knows? He might just stumble upon the answer to getting himself out of his current scrape. It was worth a shot, and a hell of a lot better than slowly going crazy in his rooms.

He started moving again, a silent ghost drifting purposefully among the evasive living.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony systematically explored a new part of the palace every day, as far as he could tell day from night, anyway. He guestimated relative times mostly from the level of activity around him and the brightness of the light that filtered through his closed eye lids. Time seemed to move differently here. Each day in Asgard seemed as long as two or three on earth, so it was difficult to say how long he had even been there. He preferred not to think about the passage of time, and set his mind on simply continuing his task with dogged determination.

Throughout his explorations, the one shadowing his steps was his constant companion. Mostly it seemed to be the same person, probably male, judging by their gait. However, if he wandered at night his shadow sounded different. Changing of the guard, he supposed.

Tony was sure that not being able to speak to anyone constituted cruel and unusual punishment for an extrovert such as himself. He was going crazy being locked in his own mind all the time. It wasn’t long before he started carrying on imaginary conversations with his shadow, sharing observations and thoughts, and cracking wise.

Lately, however, it seemed as if his shadow were answering him, which only made him question his sanity more. But there was no mistaking it. If Tony hesitated, unsure of his bearings he’d ask, _Which way to my chambers?_ and the shadow voice in his head would prompt him, _To your left, my lord._

He couldn’t lie; he was tickled by the whole “my lord” thing.  Maybe it was just a conceit of his ego tacking it on there; he was a Prince of Asgard, after all. Well, he looked like one, anyway. And not only was the voice very respectful, it gave good directions, too. It had yet to steer him wrong.

Sometimes the voice spoke with no prompting from him. _Mind the step, my lord,_ he’d hear if he came upon a stairwell unawares. Helpful, but creepy. Was he reading minds now or what?

He’d been at this mapping expedition for some weeks, yet he still only knew a fraction of the place – one spire out of the countless spires he had glimpsed on his way in. The palace was the size of a large city. It would take years to map the whole thing at the rate he was going, and what would be the point of that, really? He could feel out the features and dimensions of a room, but more often than not its purpose remained a mystery since he lacked any visual references to tell him what was what. For all he knew he had been invading people’s private homes and fumbling around with their things. Or maybe the palace was like a giant Mall of Asgard? What was the Asgardian equivalent of a Radio Shack, anyway? He could use some new gadgets to fiddle with.  Or the Gap? He’d take jeans and a t-shirt over Loki’s many layered look any day (although he had long since shed most of the outer layers and all of the armor, preferring comfort to style).

He had taken to pilfering items he thought felt interesting or useful, collecting things like a magpie to stash back at his nest. One good thing about not existing was that he could take what he wanted without anyone trying to stop him. They couldn’t even acknowledge what he was doing. Whatever inhabitants he came across must have started dreading a visit from Casper the Klepto Ghost and had passed the word along. He was certainly coming across more locked doors in his path than he had before.

The only areas of the palace he could identify with any certainty were the kitchens and dining halls. The heady smell of roasted meats, the earthy smell of fresh vegetables and the homey smell of baking bread made his mouth water uncomfortably. He did experience hunger and thirst in this body, though apparently they weren’t something that could kill him – at least, not for a very long time. He’d found that he could sip water from a chalice, though it was a slow and messy affair that rarely sufficed to quench his thirst. There was, however, no way for him to partake of food. The smell of it quickly became annoying, and he started avoiding those places. He didn’t need the reminder of his hollow, aching belly.

Today, however, the smell of apples crossed his path, sending him completely around the bend. Relentlessly he followed the scent of them like one of the Captain’s bloodhounds on the trail of Cool Hand Luke, until he at last came to a large hall.  He was getting pretty good at reading the feel of a place and estimating its relative dimensions using an intuitive algorithm of air currents, ambient light and population density. Here it was bright and a steady breeze whispered past him, probably from an open terrace. Not a lot of people, though. Tony could only sense a few some way ahead of him, along with his omnipresent shadow nearby.

There was a brief silence when Tony first walked in, but soon the clink of dishes and platters started up again. The image of a long banquet table being laid for a feast came to mind, but the feasters had yet to arrive. He could smell all manner of food, but the top note was crisp and tart and he had never in his life smelled anything that he needed more and holy hell his mouth was flooding with saliva and –

_Where are the damn apples?_

_In the middle of the table, my lord. Ahead of you and to the right_ , his shadow dutifully answered.

Tony made a beeline for the table, heedless of the pain as he bumped into it. He turned and stuck his left hand out to guide him. A heavy decanter tipped over with a thud, followed by the splash of liquid running onto the floor. One of the hovering attendants hissed a sudden intake of breath, but made no move towards him.

_Whoops._

He carried on, trailing his fingers along every dish and sticking his hand into every bowl as he shuffled along the length of the table. The movement of the others in the room had stopped; they were all watching him now. He hoped his audience was suitably appalled at having their food pawed at. The thought tickled him in a sadistic way, and he intentionally tipped a few more things over. When that proved surprisingly satisfying, he upped the ante. He began humming the 1812 Overture, tossing whole platters of food over his shoulder and knocking things onto the floor... 

_Hm hm HM hm hm hm HM HM HMMM_

…gleefully punctuating every accented note with the crash and clatter of metal serve ware and breaking crockery.

Finally, he found the apples – a giant bowl full of them taking up a place of honor right in the middle of the table, just as his shadow had said. He stopped his destructive shenanigans and stood in thought. Now what? Maybe if he cut one up into thin enough slivers he could slip some between the stitches. Unlikely, but he did have some pretty sharp blades back at his crib that made Ginsu knives seem as dull as sporks. Or maybe he could crush it into some water. He slipped a couple of them into his pocket to bring back to his rooms to experiment with later, and then made his way out of the hall.  Once outside the doors, he paused just long enough to hear the curses of the people inside and the clink and clatter as the table was restocked and reset. A grin pulled uncomfortably at the bonds of his lips, and he headed off to his chambers with his prizes.

***

Every night, Tony dreamt. The worst was the falling – an endless descent through a dark void that began as soon as he drifted off and only ended when he woke.

There were giants in his dreams, and worse than giants.

Creatures that lurked among the shadows on the edge of his awareness.

A shining city empty of life and awash with blood.

The images were always swift and fleeting, but the feelings of hurt and loss lingered and he often woke with the taste of bitterness and betrayal in his mouth. They seemed too foreign to be manifestations of his own mind, as strange and chaotic as it often was. He began to wonder just how much of Loki’s psyche was still knocking around in this head.

***

One day as he was exploring deep in the heart of the palace, Tony came upon a set of double doors at the end of a long and otherwise empty corridor. The smell that wafted out when he opened them nearly made him reel with its familiarity. He was immediately transported to his father’s study, which, for all the man’s fascination with technology, had been filled floor to ceiling with those low-tech purveyors of knowledge: books. Old books, new books, leather bound first editions in pristine condition and trade paperbacks falling apart from broken spines. He stood for a moment inhaling the scent of history and knowledge (and more than a bit of mold). Maybe he’d stumbled upon one of those rare universal constants – books apparently smell the same in whatever realm you happened to find yourself.

_Must be a library or an archive of some sort. I’d bet the chateau in Aspen on it._

Tony entered and stood as the door closed behind him with a soft click. The air was close and stagnant, and the light dim. Keeping close to the wall, he started walking the perimeter to get a better sense of the scale of the place. It was as quiet as a library should be. The only sound he heard was his own footsteps, so it seemed that he’d lost his shadow for the moment. Despite the close feel of it, the room was enormous, perfectly round, with many single doors leading off of it and several staircases leading to upper levels. It took him some time before he finally found himself back at the doors he’d entered through. If it was indeed the palace archives, it would likely make the Library of Congress look like a book mobile. It might take weeks to map the whole thing out.

He turned his back to the doors and ventured forward a few steps until his hands met a smooth surface. Not a wall, though – it was only a few feet wide but taller than he was. He turned to his left, and a few feet on he found another. They must be the book stacks. He went back to the space between them and walked forward with his hands outstretched, brushing along the shelves with his fingertips. The stacks went on for nearly three hundred paces before his hands met nothing but empty space.

He stopped. The air was a little less close here and the light a little brighter. He figured he was standing on the verge of a large open area.

He took a few hesitant steps forward, then a few more, until he bumped his hip roughly against the sharp corner of a table.

_Son of a…!_

A grunt of pain escaped him and he stepped back. He paused, wondering which way he should go next when a loud screeching, scraping noise cut through the silence and startled him. A chair had been pulled away from the table some way ahead. It sounded like an invitation of sorts. He followed the sound, trailing his hand along the tabletop until his knees hit the seat of the chair that had been pulled out. He sat down and listened.

Soon he heard the rustling of clothing and – just on the edge of hearing – the padding of softly clad feet on the far side of the table. Then a voice broke through the heavy silence.   

“I remember young master Loki haunting these stacks day and night, and his endless questions,” the voice said. The sound of it conjured up in Tony’s mind the visage of an old and wizened librarian with a white beard and bright, intelligent eyes.   

“Whatever has become of him, I wonder?” the librarian continued, as if speaking to himself. “I would serve the ghost of him now in memory of that bright and curious lad. But it would be unwise to ask more of me than I can give. I do not want Skaði’s wrath upon this old head.”

The voice came closer. Tony heard the sound of a large piece of paper or parchment being placed in front of him, and the click of something metal on the table. He reached towards the click and grasped what felt like a pen or stylus.

_Well at least one person here remembers Loki fondly. Lucky for me he was kind of a nerdy kid._

Although there were a million and one things he wanted to know, needed to know, about where he was and the people he was among, it was the dreams of the night before that were foremost in his mind: blue skinned giants, a cathedral of ice, a casket that glowed with a cold and perilous light.

Without even thinking he wrote, _Frost Giants, history, biology, folklore, whatever you’ve got_. As he wrote, the movements of his hand seemed strange as if he were writing in a foreign alphabet. There was a pause before quiet footsteps shuffled away. The silence around him deepened and his every breath seemed annoyingly loud. He began singing silently to himself to alleviate the boredom, mostly snippets of old school bus road trip songs.

The footsteps returned by the time he’d gotten to thirty-two bottles of beer on the wall (and good lord what he wouldn’t do for a bottle of beer right now). There was a heavy thump on the table as the librarian set down whatever ancient tomes he had pulled from the nether regions of the archives. The sound of another chair screeched across the stone floor and was silent.

The old man cleared his throat and began to read aloud.

***

Fandral watched as Loki disappeared behind the door of his chambers. He was beginning to tire of long weeks of this watchdog duty, but his loyalty to Thor kept him vigilant in spite of his boredom. He nodded to the guard who had just taken up his station to relieve him of his charge for the night. As he turned to go, he caught sight of Thor silently beckoning to him in the corridor ahead.

“How now, my lord!” Fandral exclaimed boisterously and clapped him on the shoulder. “Will you be joining us in our cups tonight?”

“I think not,” Thor answered with a weak smile. “But do walk with me.”

“How goes it with my brother?” Thor waited until they were out of earshot of the guard to speak again.  Though it had not been explicitly stated, it was understood that talking about Loki was frowned upon, if not outright forbidden.

Fandral matched his tone. “As well as can be expected, I suppose. He has made no attempt to flee or conjure his way out of his situation.”

“The cuffs he wears dampen his ability, but I am sure he could still cause trouble in minor ways with what is left to him.”

Fandral shrugged. “He has made no effort to do so, as I said.”

“Where did he lead you today?”

“To the archives, where he spent most of the day. I’m surprised it took him this long to hole up there.”

“What did he do there?”

“I’ve no idea. I have never been one for scholarly pursuits, as you well know. I remained in the corridor, where two courtly maidens tarried on an errand to keep me company. My eyes were ever upon the door!” he assured in answer to Thor’s glare.

“When they were not upon a pair of ample bosoms, you mean.”

“If you thought me an unfit guardian you would not have set me this task. You know my predilections better than anyone. Besides, he is safe enough in there. Let him wallow in the smell of old scrolls.”

Thor fell quiet, seemingly appeased for the moment. Fandral decided to broach a subject that had been troubling him. “But here is something I find curious. He appears to have no knowledge of this place at all. Of course, losing one’s sight would be disorienting for any of us, but not for long if we were in a place we had lived all our lives before the blindness struck. And not for someone as clever as Loki. But he seems utterly lost at sea. Do you not think it strange?”

“I think you have answered your own query. Loki is clever – clever enough to act the hapless fool should it serve his purpose.”

“But what is his purpose?”

“To pretend to be another so that he may curry sympathy and dodge his responsibility to pay for what he has done.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s it.” Fandral agreed, but doubt pulled at his sleeve. He couldn’t exactly admit that Loki spoke silently to him, or that he often answered, or that the voice in his head was very different than the silver-tongued trickster’s had been. However, he knew better than to argue outright with Thor, who was stubborn and bullheaded at the best of times, especially where Loki was concerned. While before it had always been in Loki’s defense, taking his brother’s side even when all the evidence pointed to his guilt, now it was the opposite. And besides, what did he have to argue aside from a niggling doubt whispering in his ear? There was nothing more to be done right now. He could but watch and wait.

Thor stopped and put a hand on his arm. “Thank you, Fandral. I know it is a tedious charge.”

“Not at all! It is my pleasure to serve the House of Odin.” With a bow from Fandral they parted. Thor retreated to his own chambers. Fandral joined the others in the great hall, but his mind was far afield and he barely heeded the stories and songs that night.  


	5. Chapter 5

Jane Foster stood looking at the laptop perched upon a stack of empty equipment containers, her breath misting in the glow of the screen with every exhale. Spring in the New Mexico desert was cold, but the adrenaline high she was on now made her impervious to it. Tonight was the night she had been working towards for what seemed like her entire life.

Her Einstein-Rosen bridge array was situated in a semi-circle around the strange medallion that had served as both landing and launch pad for Thor and company during their visit. Darcy insisted on referring to it as the crash pad. She was never going to let Jane live down running over a god with her car. Twice.

“Are you ready, Dr. Selvig?”

Selvig gave a thumbs-up from his station at the array’s control panel. “Ready when you are.”

“Okay, let her rip.”

Dr. Selvig powered up the array and stepped back. A column of streaming blue-white light ascended from the medallion up into the sky like a beacon.

Jane gave a triumphant laugh. It worked! Her eyes darted over the data that came pouring in. The energy levels were fluctuating wildly. It was too unstable; they didn’t have much time.

“Hurry, Darcy. I want to get readings from inside this thing before we lose it.”

Darcy approached holding a softball-sized gray metal sphere containing various sensors, a high-tech gift from SHIELD. They’d been extremely supportive of her work since the whole Thor, mythical hammer, fire-spewing robot of doom incident. She could hardly believe that less than two years later here she was, opening a doorway into a wormhole. A freaking wormhole!

“What do I do?” Darcy asked.

“Just toss it in! But don’t get too close to the stream.”

The sphere was heavy for its size. Darcy looked from the sphere to the stream as if weighing her options, then stooped over and rolled it in two-handed like a little kid bowling. As soon as it touched the stream it shot upward several hundred feet before imploding in a blinding flash of light. The force of it hit Jane like a rogue wave, knocking her and the equipment containers backwards onto the hard packed sand. The stream collapsed and winked out.

Jane lay for a few moments looking up into the near pitch black desert night. Once she had mentally checked herself over for any damage, she pushed herself up onto her knees and wiped the sand from her hands.

“Everyone okay?” she called. “Check in.”

“Here,” Darcy called feebly from somewhere off to her right. Jane dug her Mag light from her pocket and shined it over. Darcy waved a hand but made no attempt to move.

“I’m here,” Dr. Selvig said as he came stumbling towards her. “That was quite a show.” He helped her up and the two of them went to see to Darcy. When they got to her they each grabbed one of her hands and hoisted her up.

“Wow! That went better than I expected,” Jane said as Darcy brushed herself off. “This could actually work!”

Darcy just looked at her, a deadpan foil to her unrestrained enthusiasm. “If that went well I don’t want to be around for one of your failures. Besides, I thought you’d already proved that it could work.”

“Those were just the theoretical models,” Jane dismissed with a wave of her hand. “It’s one thing to get the math to work out right. It’s something else entirely to try and send something – especially a living something – billions of miles away. This is…this is beyond cutting edge. This could change, well… _everything_!”

Jane shone the flashlight around to look for her laptop and spotted it about a dozen feet from where she herself had landed. She ran over and dug it out from the sand, praying that the precious data she’d collected was still safe and accessible as she dusted it off.

“How can we send a message to Thor about this?” she said, brushing a strand of stray hair from her face with the back of her hand.

Dr. Selvig looked up at the clear night sky and smiled. “I think we just did.”

***

A day came when Tony decided to forgo his daily explorations in favor of sun and fresh air. He sat with his back to a tree in the walled-in garden adjacent to his chambers. A light breeze ruffled his hair and blew a lock onto his forehead. He had taken to sitting out here often, especially in the late afternoon before the sun dipped behind the garden wall. It was both soothing and invigorating. Inside, the palace was just cold, dead stone and metal, and the living stayed too far out of reach. Out here, his senses danced. The very air around him pulsed and vibrated with life.

When he could still his mind and focus on just one vibration, the shape of it started to coalesce in his mind so that he could almost make out the rough outline of the tree at his back, or sense the shadowy forms of the birds he heard flitting from branch to branch above him. And there was something else, too, something that pulled at the edges of his awareness – a power that seemed tauntingly just out of reach. It was ever-present, but he felt it most keenly when he was here and it got him thinking about Loki’s magic. Maybe he hadn’t taken it all with him. Maybe, along with the nightmares lurking in his subconscious, there was still some of that ability residual in the body he now inhabited.

This body…Tony hated this body, hated being _in_ this body. His bathing routine took all of five minutes, just so he could avoid touching himself and being reminded of its alien-ness (although he had to admit that not having to deal with the constant pain of shrapnel or chronically enlarged lymph nodes was an unexpected bonus). Still, his curiosity started to get the better of him; Loki was capable of some pretty neat tricks. Tony could imagine any number of scenarios where multiple copies of himself would be useful (and not all of them involved sex). He’d learned a bit more about Loki’s abilities indirectly from the stories the librarian told during his visits to the archives: shape shifting, manipulating elements like fire and water, the usual magical stuff.

But Tony kept tripping over the same question. How did it work? He didn’t believe in gods or magic as some sort of inexplicable mystical power. There had to be a real world explanation. Everything in the universe had to obey the laws of physics, even those things that on the surface appeared not to. He was sure that at the quantum level they probably did. Human understanding just hadn’t gotten to the point of being able to explain them yet.

He felt the thrum and pulse of life, a symphony of vibrations that conjured up a vast diversity of forms. There was a part of him that resonated with the music, too. He was connected, an integral part of the composition.  Vibrations, resonance, entrainment – maybe those were the keys to Loki's magic. Could it be that somehow he was able to intuitively synchronize and control vibrational frequencies? That he had learned to manipulate the music like some sort of demented maestro? That was the only viable scientific explanation Tony could come up with, so it became his working hypothesis. If he could sync himself with the vibrations he was sensing around him…well he didn't really know what would happen.

_Time to find out._

Tony took a deep breath and focused on the warbling chatter of the birds in the branches overhead until he could single one out among the small flock. He relaxed and let his conscious mind drop down into a meditative state, coming to rest in a place of deep stillness that was like a dark, tranquil pool.

Ripples appeared on the surface around him, flowing in a slow, steady pattern as they traveled out from his center. Another point appeared in the water as if a tiny pebble had been dropped. The ripples it made were smaller and moved faster than his own, as if something were striking the surface with a quick staccato rhythm. As the ripples that moved out from both points converged, they started to synchronize.

Tony’s heart sped up and his head began to cock this way and that. Suddenly, a splash of green appeared before his eyes. Not the memory of the color, but something bearing that color, something he could reach out and touch. Leaves!

More flashes of green, then brown, then blue…the sky!

Images blinked in and out, never staying in one place for long. It was disorienting. He tried to still them, to exert some force to slow the ripples down. The images began to move and distort. He caught a final glimpse of treetop, sky, and clouds, and then all was darkness again. 

Tony reeled and fell backwards. A bubble of laughter welled up from that place where the irrepressible joy of discovery and accomplishment lived – a feeling he’d missed, being so long absent from his workshop. He rolled in the grass giggling until tears soaked through the bonds of his eyes. It wasn’t perfect; he’d need to work out a few bugs, but there it was.

He had his sight again.


	6. Chapter 6

Once Tony had learned to control the birds, he gave up his daily explorations. His avian friends were faster and more efficient at reconnaissance, and they enabled him to start building a map of not only the palace, but the surrounding city and landscape as well. It had taken some getting used to, managing multiple visual streams at once, but his multi-tasking abilities had always been impressive. When he did feel like walking about, a few of them always accompanied him to act in place of seeing eye dogs.

Mostly, he just visited the archives now. It was the one place, besides his own chambers, that his shadow never followed him. Tony had come to resent the vigilant watch on him. Before it had been somewhat useful in case he got himself into trouble, but now he needed privacy to experiment with Loki’s abilities and to learn what he could about this place so he could figure out a plan to get the hell out. The librarian remained resolutely helpful in that regard. Through his readings, Tony had learned much about Asgard and its pantheon of gods and goddesses, their history, and the role each one played here. That’s how he first got wind of Heimdall, the peeping tom in chief.

Tony started keeping eyes on him to make sure he wasn’t in the god’s sights. It wasn’t long before he noticed a correlation between a tell-tale prickling of the skin on the back of his neck and when the birds showed him that Heimdall’s gaze was directed at the palace. So he had more than one shadow, after all.

At the moment, Heimdall seemed to be otherwise occupied. Whenever that happened, Tony took the opportunity to play in the garden. He sat himself down by his usual tree, intent on exploring an internal world now. 

The power at the edges of his awareness remained stubbornly inaccessible and he suspected there was something holding it back. Sure, he could do minor tricks, like using animals to see or making small objects move ( _telekinesis, neat!_ ), but something was preventing him from tapping into Loki’s full bag of tricks.

He touched the cuff on one of his wrists. It was made of some unknown metal or alloy. Not solid; there was a joint and, presumably, a locking mechanism. As he traced his fingers over the symbols engraved on the surface, words of power formed in his mind. So it was the cuffs that were keeping a lid on the magic. He’d need to find a way out of them if he was ever going to experience everything this body could do.

His wonder and curiosity about this body’s capabilities, even restrained as they were, was helping him slowly get over his initial revulsion. He’d moved into the love-hate phase of their relationship. And yet, the more Tony allowed himself to inhabit this body, the more uncomfortable he felt in his own skin. And he didn't think that was all just him. He began to wonder about Loki's _Jötun_ self.  The description of the Frost Giants the librarian had given him painted a very different picture than the Loki he knew and loathed: enormous size, blood-red eyes, and blue skin that could freeze their hapless victims with a touch. Where was _that_ Loki hiding?

He settled in with his intention firmly fixed, and then let his mind go wherever it would take him.

_Yoo-hoo, _Jötun_! Where are you?_

The garden environs melted away and he found himself inside of a palace. It was sort of like the actual place, but when he mentally called up and examined the specs, there were hidden rooms and nooks and crannies he hadn't come across in the real one. He got up and wandered through empty rooms and down corridors, until he came to a long and winding staircase lined with torches and heading down to the nether regions of the palace. It became colder the further down he went. A chill wind blew up from below, making the torches flicker. The stairs and walls became lined first with frost, then with solid ice, though his feet never slipped.

When he got to the bottom he stopped and listened. The torchlight couldn’t reach into the dark corridor that stretched out ahead of him. There was something scuffling about in the inky blackness, like a trapped and wary animal. Every time he tried to move towards it, it drew away.

Perhaps this called for a bit of _Jötun_ whispering . No talking, no touching, no eye contact.

He retreated to the lowest step and sat down to wait. It was long before he felt the presence move towards him. Tony let himself drift down even further, into still water again. The _Jötun_ ’s presence made a series of large, slow ripples in the pool. He didn’t try to control it, just allowed his own energy to become entrained in the other’s. Once they were in sync, he felt himself being pulled upwards, until he was again seated in the garden. Several birds hopped about on the grass around him, taking him in from every angle and confirming the blueness of his skin.

_Huh. Whaddaya know?_

The transformation changed both his appearance and his perceptions. It was as if someone had turned up the volume. The vibrations around him were suddenly more present, and it was easier to sense and tap into them.

Before he could take this new form for a test drive, his field reconnaissance alerted him that Heimdall had stirred.

_Okay, back in the box, Blue Boy._

He transformed back to vanilla Loki just as the prickling on the nape of his neck said he was being watched again.

***

 “I am loath to allow the tesseract out of Asgard again,” Odin said. “It is a dangerous artifact, and there are many who would seek to waylay its bearer and take its power for themselves.”

He was met with Heimdall and Thor in the council chamber, at Heimdall’s request. It seemed that some of his eldest son’s clever acquaintances on Midgard had not been idle.

“I would not advise you otherwise, All-Father,” Heimdall replied. “I do, however, believe that this is a matter of the utmost importance, and one requiring swift action. We are cut off from the nine realms. As long as that remains the case our power is diminished.”

“I concur with Heimdall,” Thor said. “Already there is unrest, and some factions move to undermine Asgard’s influence, particularly in Svartalheim. If there is any way this technology can be used to restore the Bifrost, it is worth the risk to bring it here.”

Odin stood a moment in silent consideration before giving his answer. What they said was true, of course. The loss of the rainbow bridge had indeed left Asgard dangerously isolated. He only hoped that this excursion would not allow Loki, or any of his as yet unknown allies, access to the tesseract to aid his escape.  

“Very well,” he said. “Thor, extend an invitation to Lady Foster to join us here to complete her work. Go now, but tell no one of the nature of your journey.”

Thor bowed his head in obeisance and left the throne room.

Odin watched him go. “Keep your eyes upon him until he returns and the tesseract is once again safely in the vault.”

“I shall not blink, All-Father.” Heimdall bowed and then departed to take up his station near the broken remnants of the Bifrost.

***

“Still following the ghost around, Fandral?” Volstagg greeted him as he entered the great hall.  “What slight have you committed against the mighty Thor to warrant this tedious post?”

Fandral took a seat opposite him and next to Hogun, and gladly accepted the flagon of mead offered. “It is no punishment I assure you,” he replied. “It is an assignment of the greatest delicacy and import. Thor has shown me favor in giving it to me.”

“I’m glad it did not fall to me,” Sif said, joining them at the table. “I would only lead him to a patch of razor thorns and trip him,”

“I owe Loki my life,” Fandral said. “We all do in one way or another. Such debts are not easily wiped clean, simply because the one owed has strayed from the right path.”

“He didn’t _stray_ ,” Sif argued, “He chose an entirely different path altogether, one of bitterness and evil. We owe him nothing now.”

Fandral shifted uneasily in his seat but said nothing.

“They say a mischief of magpies accompanies him wherever he goes now,” said Hogun.

Fandral waved his hand dismissively. “I see no reason to grudge him the company of a few birds.”

“He is up to no good,” Sif said. “There is some magic at work there, I would swear to it. Why does Odin allow it?”

Sif had never had an easy relationship with Loki, yet there was truth in what she said. Fandral himself had thought as much, and it went a long way towards easing his previous doubts about Loki’s true identity.

“It harms no one, and it’s not all that surprising,” he replied. “He was ever conversing with nature as a boy. I often thought he preferred the company of beasts to ours.”

Volstagg laughed. “Remember the time we went hunting for bilgesnipe? We spent days tracking one through fetid marshes, and when we finally came upon the thing he would not allow us to kill it! Said it told him some sob story about its eggs having just hatched, and he didn’t want her young to starve.”

Fandral joined Volstagg in his boisterous laughter, but Sif and Hogun remained stubbornly somber.

“I don’t trust him,” Sif said.

Fandral laughed again. “Of course you don’t. You never did.”

“Why should I? He proved himself untrustworthy long before he ever usurped the throne.”

Volstagg groaned. “Oh, not the hair thing again!” 

“That was hardly his fault,” Fandral said.

“That was entirely his fault!” Sif countered.

“Well, he did his best to fix it.”

“Indeed,” Volstagg offered, “I think chestnut is a fetching color on you.”

Sif made no reply, but her glare wiped the grin from Volstagg’s face.

“Come now friends, have you all forgotten the good he has done us as well? I would have died on Jötunheim, we all could have, but for him. And Volstagg, what about the time you fell mortally ill from the fire berries? It was his magic that cured the blindness and brought you back from the gates of Hel. Or when he tricked the dwarves into mending your armor, Hogun, and the unbreakable spell he had them cast saved your neck when next we did battle against the rock trolls.”

Hogun kept his eyes on the table in front of him. “He is a traitor.”

“He is still a prince of Asgard,” Fandral insisted.

“No!” Sif banged her flagon down, causing a small tidal wave of mead to spill. “He is nothing. “You heard the words of Skaði. He is a ghost, a dark shadow upon the House of Odin that is best forgotten, in hope that it will fade and disappear given time. We should not even speak of him.” She got up noisily and strode from the hall.

Fandral looked at Hogun, who only glowered and looked away. He turned to Volstagg to find some measure of accord. Sure enough, Volstagg was ever true. He raised his flagon and winked.

“To ghosts,” he said.

Fandral grinned and raised his own in answer. “To ghosts!”

They drank.

A pair of magpies perching on the parapet nearby caught Fandral’s attention. They watched him for a moment with shining black eyes before taking flight in the direction of the rising moon.


	7. Chapter 7

The next time Tony was alone in his chambers he continued his experiments with Loki’s _Jötun_ form. First he made sure Heimdall was occupied. The birds, and Tony’s lack of feeling watched, confirmed that the watchman’s gaze was directed outward and not on Asgard at all.

It was way easier to conjure Blue up this time; it seemed that the more he was let out, the more he wanted to be let out. Within moments Tony’s appearance was once again transformed.

_Now what can this body do?_

He went inside and dipped a chalice in the waterfall. When he stuck his finger in it, the water instantly froze solid. He smacked the cup against the marble basin to break the ice and release his finger, then grabbed another and filled it. This time, he simply held the metal cup in the palms of his hands. Frost appeared on the outside of the cup, and the water crackled and popped as it froze from the edges in.

Tony considered the cuffs again. Presumably, they would have been fabricated out of a very tough metal though he was unfamiliar with Asgardian ore deposits. But metal is metal, and even the toughest had to abide by the basic laws of physics. And cold makes metal brittle.

Odin did say that no one but a few knew of Loki's little blue secret, so unless they were forged by Odin himself it's possible they hadn’t been made with that in mind. As far as anyone knew, they only had to be strong enough to keep a god from breaking them with outright force. He took a little mental tour around the molecular structure of one of the metal bands, calculating the hardness, tensile strength, nil ductility temperature and required fracture energy.  If he could produce a low enough temperature, he might be able to get them to crack.

_Could it really be that simple?_

Tony wrapped a hand around the left cuff and thought really cold thoughts. Sub-zero, Antarctic, outer reaches of space cold. Then with a muffled yell he smashed it as hard as he could against the wall. The cuff showed no sign of outward damage, but another quick tour of the structure revealed a hairline fracture in a small piece within the locking mechanism. He applied the icy touch again. This time when he smashed it, the piece shattered and the cuff popped off, falling with a clatter to the ground.

_Huh, I guess it could._

He gave the other cuff the same treatment. As soon as it was off, he felt that power that had been held back hit him like a hurricane wind. He reeled and leaned against the wall until the squall died down. When it had passed, the power remained. He was soaking in it, and every atom in his body seemed to dance with it.

He picked the cuffs up off the floor and held them in the palm of one hand. With a thought, they transformed into a pair of small metal wolf sculptures. Tony had always been fond of wolves. Then he tore some strips of cloth from his bedding and wrapped one around each wrist, bidding them to take on the exact appearance of the cuffs.

One last thing to try. He took a knife to the bonds on his lips again, but they snapped right back.

_Damn it!_

After a dozen or so attempts he gave up. Still, he was much further ahead of the game than he had been just an hour ago. Maybe there was some hope in getting out of this after all.

***

“I’m going to have to rework the calculations again before we try setting up and testing the array prototype here,” Jane said. It was early morning in Asgard, and she and Thor walked side-by-side in a grassy, tree-filled courtyard. “The Casimir effect _should_ be sufficient to produce a mass-negative region of space-time to hold the wormhole throat open. I just need to figure out where I got it wrong.”

“I have confidence that you will do just that,” Thor assured her.

“I’m sorry, I’m probably boring you with all of my technical jargon. I’ll stop talking shop if you like.”

“Not at all! Your enthusiasm is infectious, even if I have no clear idea of which you speak.”

As they walked, a couple of black and white birds hopped along on the path before or beside them. Jane looked around, wide-eyed, and took in a deep breath. The thought that she was breathing a totally alien atmosphere sent her thoughts spinning into hyper-drive again.

“Wow!” she said. “I still can’t really believe that I’m here. In Asgard. With you. And this is not earth. I’m not on earth anymore. It’s just…wow.”

Thor laughed. “I do hope you enjoy your stay. As soon as the array is working, I shall take you on a proper tour.”

Jane’s broad smile faded. “Oh. So…is that the only reason I’m here? Because of my work?”

Thor stopped. Taking hold of her arm, he turned her to face him. “No. It is the only reason I was given leave to bring you here, but do not doubt that your presence here matters to me, well beyond the importance of your work.”

Jane gazed up at him, and the earnestness behind his eyes made her heart practically gallop out of her chest.

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said with a nervous little laugh. “Which is funny because usually I’m fighting to be appreciated for my brain and not, you know, other things.”

“I assure you, Jane, I appreciate all things about you.”

“Oh, stop!” she said, playfully batting his shoulder. It was like swatting a large oak tree. She winced and tried to play it off as an awkward smile.

“I speak truthfully,” he insisted.

She slipped her arm around his. “Well then, I appreciate all things about you, too.”

They walked along in silence. Jane could have happily spent the rest of the day just like this, but her rumbling stomach apparently had other ideas. She realized that in the chaos and rush to get all of the array equipment packed up and ready to go, she hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before.

“Do you know what else I would appreciate?” she said. “Breakfast. I’m going to need some brain fuel if I’m going to tackle those equations again.”

“Come!” Thor laughed. “You shall have all that you desire.”

He led her out of the courtyard and back into the palace.

***

So Thor was back in town. Tony’s intrepid bird scouts had been unable to locate him for a few days. He found that he preferred the magpies to other birds for these jobs; they had keen sight and hearing, and he seemed to have a natural affinity for connecting to them. As he sat in the archives that morning getting schooled on the wily ways of dwarves, a pair of them had caught sight of Thor in one of the lower courtyards. He must have returned sometime last night from a trip to earth, because who was that with him? None other than one of the world’s top astrophysicists and Thor’s main squeeze, Dr. Jane Foster.

He recognized her from the SHIELD dossier he’d read on Thor. She was a young woman with an off the charts IQ, judging by her work. Pretty, in a nerdy, mousey sort of way. He liked nerdy mice. Short-ish. Well, she would have been short-ish on earth. Here in bizarro Oz she was a munchkin – a genius astrophysicist munchkin with the key to his problem. It seemed that Dr. Foster was already way ahead of him on the instantaneous interstellar travel idea.  Not exactly a transporter, but still. He bet he could offer her a sweet licensing agreement.

But he was getting ahead of himself. First get home and get Loki. Then commercialize wormhole travel.

The rough outline of a plan began to formulate in his mind. It would be risky. If it failed, he’d tip his hand about the magic and who knows what they would do to him then. There wouldn’t be a second chance.

As he tested various scenario options and made risk-benefit calculations for each, Cap’s words intruded into his thoughts.

_Big man in a suit of armor. Take that away and what are you?_

_Uh, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist._

Cap had gotten it wrong. Being Tony Stark _was_ his suit of armor. Without that, what was he? He didn’t really want to find out, but he inevitably would if he stayed here much longer.

Sif’s words had begun to haunt him more and more. He really was nothing here. He was nobody, and it had long since started to take its toll.  His past life seemed a distant dream – less real even than the half-remembered nightmares that visited him in his bed every night. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d even thought about Pepper or the others, couldn’t even really see them in his mind’s eye anymore, couldn’t remember the sound of JARVIS’ once omnipresent voice. His memories had become transparent ghosts, slowly dematerializing into formless mist. As their tattered rags began to dissipate, he felt himself fading right along with them.

He had to get out, no matter the risks, before whoever Tony Stark was slipped away completely.


	8. Chapter 8

Before dawn, one of Tony’s scouts alerted him that Thor and Jane were on the move. He’d kept the good doctor under surveillance since her arrival, tracking her progress in getting the Einstein-Rosen bridge array ready for prime time. Now as he lay in bed monitoring the visual feed, he saw the pair loading up a draft horse with several large containers. Once that was done Thor mounted his own horse, pulling Jane up to sit before him, and they rode off, unaware of the small spy shadowing them from the air.

It was still dark when they arrived at the broken Bifrost site and were greeted by Heimdall. Tony used the bird like a tiny recon drone, directing it to make several passes over the site to gather logistical data.  At the near end of the bridge there was a large ring etched with runes or symbols of some sort, around which the trio erected the equipment in a semi-circle. Tony waited until the sun had just crested over the horizon and Jane and her crew were putting the finishing touches on the array, then he sprang from his bed.

_It’s show time._

After long weeks of practice, his repertoire of Loki’s former abilities had grown. Not only had he picked up the cloning trick, he found he could take on different forms himself, too. Phase one of his escape plan drew on an old classic and one of Tony’s favorite jailbreak stories. He pulled an Alcatraz and created a doppelganger Loki to fill the bed, just on the off chance that anyone checked in on him. Even though Fandral had never stepped foot in his chambers and Heimdall’s attention was fully on his work, still it was better safe than sorry.

He went out into the garden and initiated phase two. With a simple thought he transformed into a magpie and flew up above the palace.  Shape-shifting still didn’t give him the use of his own eyes, though, so he recruited a wingman to flank him and navigate as he made his way to the Bifrost site.

Tony and his navigator joined up with the forward scout and alit on the ground a good way from where the trio was working to set up the array. There was no tree cover or anywhere else to hide, so he hopped forward in fits and starts, trying not to call attention to himself, small as he now was.  When he reached a point about a dozen feet away from the ring he stopped, not daring to get closer.

The lack of cover and Tony’s careful approach didn’t seem to matter much. Jane’s attention was firmly fixed on the screen in front of her as she barked orders and Thor and Heimdall scrambled to make adjustments to the array equipment. Tony hunkered down to watch and wait.

Finally, all was ready. Heimdall and Thor stepped back and away from the array as Jane powered it up. She punched something into the keyboard and a blue light slowly filled the circle. As it reached the outer edges, it shot straight up into the early morning sky in a constant, flowing stream.

_Well hot damn, Foster! You really are good._

As soon as the energy stream appeared it took all of Tony’s virtually nonexistent impulse control to keep from jumping in. First he needed to get confirmation of the wormhole’s viability before he could embark on the third and final phase of Operation New York or Bust. It looked stable from what he could tell from his limited vantage point. Jane was smiling as she talked and gestured excitedly to Thor, so that was a good sign.

He sent his birds up again to try and sneak a look at the data. They made several passes overhead as close as Tony dared allow them. Still, they couldn’t get near enough to the laptop screen to give him information on the readings she was getting, or hear more than a word or two of what she was saying to Thor.

His feathers ruffled and he hopped about, buzzing with impatience and the energy the stream was throwing off. He had just decided to try to get close to them himself when Jane shook her head and gestured, holding up a finger as if to say, “one more minute.” He didn’t think he had much time before she shut the stream down and called it a success. He couldn’t wait for confirmation anymore.

It was now or never.

The only thing standing in his way was Thor, partially blocking the open space that led into the ring. Tony transformed into a large wolf and ran headlong towards him. He sprang, hitting Thor with his full weight and knocking him over. Then he jumped into the stream.

At first he was pulled along at a breakneck speed. Way faster than he could have ever hoped to achieve in any of his Iron Man suits. There was no sense of time or space; he couldn’t tell where he was or how long he’d been there. All he knew was that he was starting to slow down.

The energy around him became heavy and thick. It was like being caught in a web of sticky rope that prevented him from moving either forward or back. The stream began to compress and stretch, taking him with it in agonizing waves. He couldn’t breathe. His chest felt near to collapse from the pressure. A vice-like grip closed around his throat, and he felt himself being pulled along once more. Then, darkness.

***

Loki lay face down on the ground where Thor had dropped him after rescuing him from the collapsing wormhole. Jane had been so absorbed in tracking the data she didn’t even notice the giant wolf running towards them until after it had tackled Thor. He had reverted back to his true form as soon as he’d hit the stream, and Thor had jumped in right after him. She didn’t know how it had happened – maybe it was the power of Mjolnir – but the energy around them had stabilized just enough to allow Thor to pull Loki free. It had been a close call. A few more seconds and he would have been torn apart or crushed as the field collapsed.

Jane grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to roll him over to check if he was breathing, but she couldn’t budge him; he was heavier than he looked. Thor knelt beside her and easily pulled Loki over onto his back. She bent over and then recoiled in horror. Someone had sewn the skin of his eyelids and lips shut! Throwing a quick glance at Thor she reached a trembling hand into Loki’s tunic. A weak pulse fluttered almost imperceptibly under her fingertips.

“I think he’s alive,” she said.

Thor stood. “We must get back at once. Leave the array here; Heimdall will guard it. Can you handle a horse yourself, Jane?”

“I grew up around horses; of course I can handle one,” Jane said, eyeing the over-large beast before her with far less certainty than her voice conveyed.

With a boost from Heimdall, Jane mounted the draft horse they’d used to carry the equipment. They rode swiftly back to the palace, Thor with the limp body of his brother before him. Jane had some trouble keeping up, but the horse she rode knew its business and its way. By the time she dismounted before the long staircase leading to the palace gates, Thor was already half-way up them, carrying Loki as if he were no heavier than a child.

Jane ran to catch up, sweating and practically gasping for breath by the time she finally reached the top. As she entered the open door she passed by one of the guards and then stopped. Loki was lying in a motionless heap just inside. It looked as if Thor had simply dumped him there and left. She looked around the vast entry hall, finally catching sight of him retreating quickly down one of the corridors to the right.

“Hey!” she called after him. “Hey! You can’t just…”

Thor kept walking as if he hadn’t heard. Jane let out a frustrated groan and took off after him. When she finally caught up, she grabbed his arm.

“Stop!”

He finally heeded and turned to face her.

She stood huffing and puffing for a moment before she could even get her next words out. “You can’t just leave him there! He needs medical attention.”

“He’ll live,” said Thor, turning away again.

Jane stepped in front of him, blocking his way. “Are you sure about that? And why are his lips and eyes sewn shut? That’s barbaric!

Thor’s brow quirked in surprise. “You know what he is guilty of, the death and destruction he has caused on your home world. Should he not be held accountable for the lives he has taken?”

“I’m not saying I don’t think he should be punished. I’m saying I don’t think he should be tortured!”

“And what would have happened to him if he had remained in Midgard? You know as well as I do that for his crimes, Loki would have been put to death. Our ways here are different, Jane. We will deal with our own in whatever way we deem fit, guided by the wisdom of Odin. I must ask that you respect that. Please. Say nothing more about my brother.”

The grim set of his jaw and the steely tone of his voice told her she wouldn’t really get anywhere arguing with him. She nodded weakly, and Thor continued on his way. When she went back to the entry hall, Loki was still lying in exactly the same place he had been. Someone else had joined the guard, one of Thor’s friends – the flirty one she’d met the other night. He smiled and touched his forehead in greeting. She gave a small wave, and he returned his attention to the lifeless body on the floor.

“You’ve got this, then?” she asked quietly.

He gave a slight nod without looking up. Well, that almost made her feel better. She slowly turned and made her way back to her room, wondering if perhaps there wasn’t something else that she should have done.


	9. Chapter 9

Tony lay on the cold floor for a long while before he had the strength to stir. There had been some movement around him intermittently, but all was silent now. Dragging himself up with great effort, he tried to crawl, but only succeeded in pitching forward onto his face again. His limbs and joints all felt like someone had tried to make a Stretch Armstrong doll out of him. He groaned in frustration and pain.

After a few moments rest, he pulled himself forward along the floor until he found a wall. That was good, at least. He was inside the palace, but that was as far as he knew. His avian friends were nowhere to be found and he was too weak to search them out and make a connection, so he’d need a few other points of reference around him before he could accurately place himself. That would have to wait. He dragged himself up a bit more and sat slumped with his back to the wall, head bowed.

He blew it. The best shot he’d had at getting home, and he blew it because he just couldn’t wait to confirm the damn thing worked.

And there it was, the crushing wave of despair. As long as he’d had something to do, some goal to work towards, he’d been able to keep it at bay. But with the weight of this failure the levees had burst, and now it just came flooding over him, blocking out whatever light there had ever been at the end of this surreal and shit-filled tunnel.

Out of the darkness, the distant memory of Cap’s voice echoed in his head.

_Sometimes, there isn’t a way out, Tony._

_Shut up, Cap_! Tony banged the back of his head against the wall in time to his silent words. _Shut up shut up shut up._

When the echoes finally stopped rattling around his skull he leaned forward and buried his face in the crook of his arm. His breath came rasping and heavy. Tears stung his useless eyes and seeped through the taught fibers of the bindings.

Footsteps, and then a voice cut through the dark silence.

“Good Asbjorn, please call your attention to this mark upon the door. Does it not bear an uncanny resemblance to Ratatoskr, carrying an over-large nut in his mouth?”

“I do not see…” a second voice said.

“Study it well until you do see, or until you no longer hear my footsteps in the corridor.”

“Ah, the outline of it begins to come clear.”

A strong hand grabbed Tony under his arm and hauled him up. He leaned heavily against the offered support all the way to his chambers and his bed, which he gratefully fell into with a groan. This body had its limits after all and he’d come dangerously close to exceeding them. Everything hurt.

He heard footsteps move towards the door.

_Thank you, Fandral._

There was a long pause.

“Rest well, my lord.”

***

Tony didn’t rest well. He woke with a start and then dropped back again onto the pillows.

_Yup, still here. Still Loki._

It was beyond irritating that he couldn't even be himself in his own dreams. He lay there for a long time trying to recapture the nightmare images that had awoken him, disturbing as they were, but they soon faded to almost nothing. He had learned quite a bit of Loki’s history from the librarian, right up until the fall from the Bifrost. What had happened after remained a mystery, though. The only clues he had were a shrouded form with vaguely reptilian features, a bright blue light, and, lurking deep within the shadows of his mind, a power that reveled in the presence of death.  

The pain in his limbs had lessened. He could move now without biting back a yelp, and when he sat up it no longer felt as if his head might explode. Eventually he got up and wandered out to the garden to sit under his old familiar tree. Several birds drifted down from the branches to join him. They hopped about on the grass, checking him over for any external injuries. One hopped onto his outstretched hand, perching on his forefinger with its cold little feet, and he drew it close to examine his face. His skin was waxy and drawn, his cheeks were hollow, and dark, bruise-like smudges circled his eyes. He looked like death warmed over and served with a side of pestilence and famine.

Speaking of famine, he’d have given his left arm for some ripe, juicy apples right about then. Or a cheeseburger and chili fries. Or even a spirulina smoothie. When he’d regained some of his energy he would experiment with attempting to teleport some food directly into his mouth, but right now his mind was whirring with the need to get on with getting out of here. 

Plan A was, objectively speaking, a disaster, but not the end of the world. He was done wallowing in self-pity.  Now to come up with Plan B and possibly C. Plans D through F might be a good idea, too, with the way things were going.

His primary objective – to get the hell out of Asgard – hadn't changed. Secondary objective was to get the hell back into his own body. Tertiary objective was to make that bastard Loki pay. So he still needed the means to get back to earth. Even if Jane could get the array working, it would be heavily guarded now. He doubted he'd get a second shot at using it unless he could convince them of who he was.

Thor was a lost cause as far as that was concerned. A dark and troubling thought began to creep into his mind. What if Thor’s intentions weren’t so righteous? Just how far would he go to protect his baby brother, anyway? Maybe Tony had been set up to take the fall for Loki and he had been in on it the whole time. Tony had been giving him the benefit of the doubt, but was that faith misplaced?

No, Thor was as forthright and standup as Loki was duplicitous. They were two sides of the same coin, and he was still willing to bet on heads at least one more time. With Thor, Tony was sure it was a case of once bitten, twice shy. Or in his case, he'd probably let Loki bite him a thousand times before the big softie learned not to pet the animals. But maybe Jane would believe him. And she could be just the leverage he needed to get Thor, the thus far immovable object, to budge.

And if that didn't work? There was always the tesseract.

It was perhaps the obvious choice; since it got him here it could get him home. The problem was, Asgard was an awfully big place and he had no idea where the little glow cube of power had been stowed away. He had a growing network of birds and beasts to spy for him, but so far they had come up empty on leads. So they would keep looking (and listening) for him, and he would make nice with Dr. Foster.

 _Okay little guy_ , he addressed the bird perched on his finger. _I’ve got a job for you to do._

***

Jane returned from another day at the Bifrost site, tired and frustrated. She couldn't get the array calibrated to stabilize the wormhole. Everything she'd tried that should have worked didn't. As she walked down the corridor to her chambers her mind was occupied with trying to wrangle wayward equations, so she didn't see the black and white bird following her until it landed directly in front of her and began chattering up a storm.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, taking a step back. "Hello there."

It was the same sort of bird she’d seen in the courtyard her first day there. It looked up at her with curious, intelligent eyes, and bobbed its head.

"What are you doing inside? Are you lost? Maybe we can find you a window..." she said, looking around.

The bird fluttered up into the air and landed behind her. It hopped forward a few feet, then stopped and looked back at her again, warbling insistently. The corridor was empty but for the two of them, so she only felt moderately foolish having a conversation with it.

"Do you want...?" Jane began hesitantly. She got the feeling the bird was trying to tell her something, which was crazy, of course, but so were a lot of things in her experience lately. Maybe birds in Asgard were smarter than birds on earth. "Do you want to show me something?" she asked.

The bird bobbed its head again.

You've got to be kidding. She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "Okay, I guess I'll follow you then?"

The bird bobbed again, then took off and flew down the corridor.

"Wait! Slow down," Jane called, sprinting after it. The bird rounded and flew back, then continued on when she had caught up. She followed it deep into the heart of the palace to a set of large, ornate doors. It landed on the threshold, hopping and pecking at them with its beak.

"So it's in here?" She opened one of the doors and looked in. The light was dim, but she could make out stacks filled with books and scrolls and parchments. "What is it you...?" she said and turned, but the bird was gone. She hesitated for a moment, then went inside and shut the door.


	10. Chapter 10

Tony sat at his usual table in the archives waiting for his guest to arrive, while the old librarian puttered about in the stacks on one of the upper levels.  He had managed to give Fandral the slip that morning. The man had a wandering eye when it came to the ladies, and all Tony had to do was take a detour past the scullery maids’ quarters. He felt a little bad about it, but it had been necessary. Even though his esteemed guest wasn’t from around these parts, he suspected she might still get in trouble for talking to him.

The door opened and closed softly. Tony heard footsteps making their way slowly towards him and then stopping just beyond the end of the stacks. He couldn’t see (the librarian had forbidden the birds from entering since they weren’t exactly housebroken), but he was certain it was her. Dr. Jane Foster had accepted his invitation via bird-o-gram after all.

She must have seen and recognized him, but she said nothing. There was a long moment of tense silence which Tony could do nothing to break.

“Ah, a visitor!” the librarian said as he came down the stairs. “I don’t often get those, and certainly none so lovely. Come, please, sit down, sit down.”

He pulled a chair out for her at the opposite end of the table from Tony.

“What can I help you with, Lady…?”

“Jane. Jane Foster. And I don’t really know. ”

Tony scribbled on a piece of parchment and slid it across the table to her.

“I…can’t read that,” she said. “Can you?”

The librarian cleared his throat as if he were uncomfortable with the request. “It is forbidden to converse with ghosts, Lady Jane.”

Tony gestured for her to give him the parchment back. Apparently the weird snafu that enabled him to communicate with the librarian was getting in the way of talking to the one person who could actually read English. He tried to make his hand form the words in the Latin alphabet, but it was slow and oddly not at all intuitive. Finally he shoved the parchment back to her.

“Okay, that just looks like a drunken spider walked across the page.”

Before Tony could respond, the outer door opened and closed again. Quick, heavy footsteps followed. His shadow had finally caught up with him.

“Ah, my lord F…” the librarian began, but abruptly cut off. Fandral must have gestured for him to stop.

“Is there something I can help you find?” the librarian asked. Silence reigned in answer. “Very well.”

The librarian shuffled away. Tony slammed a fist on the table in frustration, then slumped over with his head in his hands.

“It isn’t easy for someone to escape my watch, not even a ghost,” Fandral said aloud.

Tony sat up quickly. _You flatter yourself. It wasn’t that hard._

“Come, Jane Foster, you should not be here. I will find someone to escort you back to your chambers.”

Tony shook his head and knocked on the table insistently, then pointed towards the parchment.

“Can you read this?” Jane asked Fandral, not getting up from her seat.

Fandral sighed heavily and moved closer to the table.

“Dr. Foster I’m a big fan of your work. I need your help. Please,” Fandral read in a quick, clipped monotone.  

“What could I possibly help you with?” she asked.

Tony beckoned with his hand and she passed the parchment back to him. He scribbled madly and passed it back.

“My name is Tony Stark. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? I don’t know how, but Loki used the energy of the tesseract to switch consciousness with me.”

“Oh…kay,” Jane replied.

“I know it’s crazy,” Tony wrote and Fandral dutifully read.  “But so is traveling across the cosmos through a wormhole, right? There are more things in heaven and earth and Asgard, Jane Foster, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“So you know a little Shakespeare. That doesn’t go far in proving your claim. Why in the world would I believe you?”

“Look, Loki is a magician, right? I’m a scientist. Ask me sciencey questions, I’ll hit them out of the park. Mostly applied physics since that’s my sweet spot, but if you want to go all theoretical on me, I’m game. Just don’t make me write a whole essay. Think of poor Fandral here. Oh, your regard is touching,” Fandral added, addressing himself to Tony.

Jane laughed. “Fine, I’ll play. What year did Einstein win the Nobel for his theory of relativity?”

Tony rolled his eyes, though he was sure the effect was muted due to the fact that they were sealed shut.

“Oh please. You can do better than that.”

“Stop stalling and answer the question,” she insisted.

“Trick question. He won for his work on the photoelectric effect, and it was sometime in the 1920’s. Early 20’s.”

“Okay, close enough. Are you familiar with Giannantonio and company’s work on identifying dark energy using integrated Sachs-Wolfe measurements?

“Yeah, I wasn’t that impressed with it initially, but their updated measurements incorporating cosmic microwave background and the large-scale structures lend the theory more credence. I’m almost sold. Let’s talk about the array. Why isn’t it working?”

“Short answer? I can’t get the wormhole throat fully stabilized.”

“Have you managed to achieve a non-zero Gauss-Bonnet term?”

“Yes.”

“What about setting the kinetic energy of the dilation field to a negative value?”

“Yes! I’ve tried everything.”

“Have you checked the flux capacitor?”

“The flux…?” Jane paused and then laughed. “No, Marty McFly, I didn’t.”

“Now do you believe me?”

“Well, the probability of your telling the truth is greater than zero, I’ll give you that much.”

“Come on, Foster, you’re killing me here.”

“If you are Tony Stark then, as a scientist, you’ll concede that you haven’t really proven anything.”

“What, you want me to build an Iron Man suit? Give me the materials I’ll make it happen. Or the array. I can help you figure out what went wrong. Just give me a chance.”

“It’s really not my call.”

“But you can get Thor on board.”

Jane gave a dubious laugh. “I don’t know about that.”

“You can try. Please, I’m begging you. And you should know how difficult begging for help is for a text-book case narcissist.”  

There was a long pause. “Okay, I’ll try,” she said.

“Thank you,” Fandral read. “Now, you really should be going,” he added.

Tony heard a chair scrape the floor, followed by her and Fandral’s footsteps moving away. She paused at the edge of the stacks, he imagined possibly to look back at him, before continuing on. When the door closed, Tony leaned forward and put his forehead on the table.

_Help me, Jane Foster. You’re my only hope._

***

“Do you believe him?” Fandral asked once they were out in the corridor.

Jane shrugged. “I don’t know. He knew some pretty technical things. He certainly sounds like Tony Stark, from what I’ve seen of him on television, anyway.”

“I can assure you, Lady Jane, we do not speak so in Asgard. It was a different language to my ears.”

“Still, I suppose he could have learned it…somehow,” Jane said.

“Among us all, Loki is the only one clever enough to do so.”

“So, do you believe him?”

Fandral sighed and shook his head. “I know not what to believe. He does seem…different. And yet he is capable of magic, as Loki was. I do not know what that means. But to think that an innocent man may be subjected to the punishment meant for another makes me uneasy in my mind.”

“Exactly,” Jane said. “We should talk to Thor. There has to be some way to either corroborate or debunk his story once and for all.”

“Agreed. Can you find your way back? I must stay with my ward.”

“Oh, sure,” Jane hesitated. “I guess we can talk to Thor later, then. Join us for dinner?”

Fandral smiled. “It would be my pleasure.” He watched her retreat down the corridor, ruing the fact that he had to lie to such a fetching woman. That conversation with Thor would be anything but pleasurable.

***

 “You spoke to him?” The flash of anger in Thor’s eyes made Jane freeze up. He slammed a fist on the table and got up to violently his chair flew backwards several feet. It hit the floor with a resounding bang that reverberated up to the vaulted ceiling. Jane came unfrozen at the sound of it, and she and Fadral both jumped out of their seats.

“Well, y…yes,” she stuttered. “No. Sort of. It’s kind of hard to talk to someone whose lips are sewn shut.” She suddenly regretted her request to dine in a private hall to have this conversation, although she doubted a larger audience would really have thwarted Thor from his temper tantrum.

“Jane…”

She held up a hand to stop him. “Listen! I know it’s far-fetched, but so is my being on an alien planet among a bunch of legendary gods. I don’t know how it might have happened, or if it’s even true, but if there’s the slightest chance that he isn’t your brother, you have to look into it.”

“Why?”

His obstinacy sparked her own temper and caused it to flair. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

Thor dismissed her with a shake of his head. “Loki lies. He is using you to get to me. Do you not see that?”

“An innocent man may be being tortured in Loki’s place. Do _you_ not see _that_?” she countered.

“Enough!” Thor barked. “You are in Asgard, Jane Foster, and so long as you are here you must abide by our law. Do not speak to him again, for if you do I shall not be able to protect you from the consequences.”

Jane looked at Fandral. “A little help here would be nice,” she muttered through gritted teeth.

Fandral stepped forward. “Thor, please, I think you should hear her out.”

Thor rounded on him. “Not you as well?”

Fandral held his ground. “I know Loki’s whiles, so do not think that I am naïve. I’ve spent the most time with him since his return, so I know what I am about when I say that there has been some change in him.”

“Look, we’re not asking you to believe him, or to let him go or anything like that,” Jane said. “But it couldn’t hurt to get a message to SHIELD and at least try to check out his story.”

Thor remained silent for a long moment, until his shoulders sagged and he breathed a heavy sigh.  “And how do you propose we do that?”

Jane grinned, seeing his resolve had weakened. “I’ll figure out how to get the array working. When I get back to New Mexico, I’ll have Dr. Selvig reach out to his contacts at SHIELD. They can check on Stark.”

“Very well. But if it so happens that Tony Stark is alive and well – and entirely himself – you will drop this matter of my brother’s punishment,” Thor said, then turning to Fandral, “and you will be relieved of your duty. I will find another keeper to watch over him.”

Thor left the hall, not waiting for them to follow. Jane and Fandral exchanged a look.

“Do you really think we are in the right?” Fandral asked quietly.

“God, I hope not,” Jane answered.


	11. Chapter 11

Fandral had just relieved the night guard and taken up his station outside of Loki’s chambers when the sound of Heimdall’s great horn reverberated through the halls of the palace. The guards in this wing not on active sentry duty went scurrying to answer the call. After deliberating for a few moments, he had just made up his mind to go with them when Thor appeared in the corridor walking quickly towards him.

“Where is he?” Thor demanded.

“In his chambers, my lord. He has not stirred from them since yesterday.”

“See that he remains there.”

“What is happening? Why has the alarm been sounded?”

“Frost Giants.” Thor practically spat the words. “They’ve appeared in half a dozen places across the realm with no warning. And they keep coming.”

“Frost Giants? How…?”

“We don’t know. But I fear this is a diversion orchestrated by Loki to aid in his escape.”

That didn’t seem right. Why would they help Loki after what he had done? But it was hardly the time to argue.

“Surely I could be of more use to you on the field of battle?” Fandral said.

“No! I want your eyes on him at all times.”

“But…”

“Do as I say,” Thor commanded. “We can handle this.”

Thor retreated back down the corridor. Fandral watched until he was out of sight, and then entered Loki’s chambers.

***

Tony was in his chambers when the alarm went up. He sent a few of his birds to check it out, and through their eyes he saw smoke billowing up from several areas well outside of the city. Warriors hurried out of the palace gates and began assembling in one of the lower courtyards. An attack of some sort, then? Asgard was a city built on war, after all.

Whatever it was, the timing couldn’t have been better.

He’d found what he thought was Odin’s hidey-hole – the Fort Knox of Asgard. He had an inside man there now. Well, more of an inside mouse, or vole, or…something small and rodent-like anyway. Having convinced the bird of prey that had it in its talons to let it go on the doorstep of the vault, the critter was now firmly in his debt. He’d been skulking about for a while, but so far no sign of the tesseract. Tony was sure it was there, though.  Maybe he could use the chaos of this unexpected attack to his advantage and get in there himself to take a look around while his keepers were busy elsewhere.

He palmed a few of Loki’s throwing knives and tucked them away into an inter-dimensional pocket, just in case he met any armed resistance. Not that he wanted a fight; he just wasn’t going to let anyone get between him and his ticket home if he found it. But before he could get any further, Fandral barged into his chambers without so much as a knock. That didn’t bode well. Whatever was going on, it had to be serious. Tony might still be able to slip away now, but not unnoticed.

_What’s all the hubbub, bub?_

“Frost Giants. They’ve attacked several rural areas, far from the city.”

Tony’s conscience started to itch. _But you guys can handle it, right? Thor and his posse? No problem._

“They’ve appeared in at least six different places. Our forces will be spread thin, and Thor can only be in one place at a time.” Fandral paced back and forth, clearly agitated.

_Then what are you doing here babysitting me?_

“My orders from Thor are to stay with you, no matter what happens.” Fandral snapped.

 _Then I’ll go with you to fight._ The offer was out of his mouth before he even thought about it. He cringed inwardly at the loss of a golden opportunity. Never one to make the sacrifice play, eh, Cap?

“You shall stay where you are.”

 _But I can help!_ Tony insisted.

“How? You are blind,” Fandral said.

_Not as blind as you think._

Fandral stopped pacing. “So, your magic _has_ been restored to you, then?” His voice was tight with suspicion. “How did you manage it?”

_That’s not important right now. The important thing is I can use it to help._

“Or flee. Thor’s orders were clear.”

_If I could flee, I wouldn’t still be here, now would I? It’s not like I have anywhere to go. Damn it, Fandral, there’s no time…_

Tony stopped arguing as a series of images earnestly vied for his attention. Not a bird’s-eye view, but something scuttling close to the ground revealed dark stone walls, a blue light – his rodent friend had found it! Tony’s elation was short lived. The rodent nosed the body of a guard lying on the ground. Then something passed in front of the tesseract’s light: the crooked shadow of a dark figure, cloaked and hooded so that most of its face was hidden. What did show was vaguely reptilian, and Tony recognized it immediately from his dreams.

_Oh, no you don’t! That’s not yours._

“Oh no I don’t what?”

_Not you! Listen, things just got a whole lot worse. There’s someone in the vault. Go find Thor. Tell him the vault’s been breached. The two of you meet me there._

“You’re mad!” Tony realized then that Fandral had long since dropped the ‘my lord’ thing. He’d happily accept the loss of an ego boost if it meant Fandral now actually believed he wasn’t Loki.

 _Fandral, please!_ Tony laid a hand on his arm. _You have to trust me._

“Tell me how you know this to be true.”

_I have eyes in the vault._

“The birds?”

_Among others. I think lizard face is after the tesseract. And he’s bad news – really bad news. Like the stuff of nightmares bad news. The invasion was just a diversion to get him in. You have sworn to serve the House of Odin, haven’t you? You can’t stand by and let this happen. You just can’t._

“If I act upon what you have said and my faith in you is misplaced, it could cost me my position, Thor’s friendship…even my very life!”

 _I know, and I’m sorry._ Tony turned and walked towards the open garden door. _But I’m going to the vault, with or without you. You can tell Thor I slipped your guard. That’ll be true enough._

Tony transformed into a bird and took off. Two others swooped in to flank him and they soared up over the wall and away from the palace grounds.

***

“I ordered you to watch him,” Thor thundered when Fandral broke the news of Loki’s flight. As soon as he had left Loki’s chambers, he’d run to the central courtyard where the forces of Asgard were being mustered. He was just in time to catch Thor before he led the first contingent into battle.

“I did,” Fandral replied. “I watched him turn into a bird and fly away. He can access his magic again. I know not how.”

Thor let out a roar of frustration.

“Before he left, he did say that there was an intruder in the vault. That’s where he was heading. He wanted us to meet him there.”

“Just as I suspected. This was all his doing; he is after the tesseract. You and I will deal with Loki. Volstagg, you are in command until I return.”

“Er, I could just meet you there,” Fandral said as Thor began to spin Mjolnir. Thor grabbed him by the back of his cuirass and took off.


	12. Chapter 12

The vault was a small fortress built upon its own floating island of rock and well-hidden among the bare, stony crags of the larger island that supported the palace and most of the surrounding city. It was easy to miss but Tony’s keen-eyed navigators knew just what to look for, and the three landed on the doorstep without incident. Now to get in, and for that he would need opposable thumbs. He shifted back into Loki’s form and tried one of the doors.

It was unlocked.

He pushed it open just enough to allow one of the birds to poke its beak in and look around. Neither guards nor intruders stirred within the dimly-lit entryway. When he was certain that the coast was clear, Tony assumed his avian form again and hopped inside with his two companions. It would be faster to make a quick sweep of the place if they split up, so he directed one to cover the vault’s left wing, while he and the other covered the right.

As they flew swiftly and silently through the maze of the vault’s interior, Tony monitored his visual feeds for any sign of the intruder. The place looked more like a museum than a vault, with unique weapons and other rare items – Odin’s war booty, no doubt –displayed in lit alcoves all along each corridor. Left-wing bird’s search was turning up nothing, but he and his companion soon had more luck. Bad luck, that is.

They passed over the body of a guard lying face-down before a heavy stone pedestal. There, still in its place, the tesseract glowed with a cold light inside its housing. Further on they came upon the bodies of two more guards, glassy-eyed and lifeless.

_Definitely getting warmer._

A shadowy figure caught his companion’s eye as they passed by the opening of a small side passageway, and they reeled around to follow after it. The figure crouched close to the wall, moving swiftly and purposefully among the various artifacts as if searching for something. But if not the tesseract, what?

The figure stopped suddenly and turned its head, forcing Tony and his companion to dive for cover behind a large iron brazier. When they emerged again, their prey was no longer in sight. Tony let out a muffled chirp of frustration and took off again in pursuit. His companion turned its head this way and that to glance into alcoves and small side rooms as they flew, until at last they came to a short flight of steps leading down into a long chamber.  At the far end, Tony could just make out a deeper darkness moving deftly between the pools of light cast by the artifact displays.

He landed among the shadows on the stone floor behind the intruder while his companion alit in a nearby alcove to keep watch. The thing was roughly man-sized and heavily hooded and cloaked so that he couldn’t really make out the shape of it or its features. It made no move as he drew near; its attention was captured by the display of a single, heavily armored gauntlet, which it now reached for with both hands.  

_Stop right there, lizard breath._

The would-be thief stopped as if it had heard. It turned and…maybe that was a smile? Its gaping maw gaped a little wider, anyway. From under its deep hood it regarded Tony, now in Loki’s form once again.

“Ah, I had hoped it was you following me,” it said, taking a few steps forward. “You have spared me a visit to the palace to collect you, traitor. You have much to answer for to Him, and I shall take pleasure in every futile cry for mercy He draws from your perfidious tongue.”

Before Tony could work out who _He_ might be, there was a ruckus back the way they had come, complete with slamming doors, shouting, and thundering footsteps. Thor really wasn’t one for subtlety or the element of surprise. Oh well, best to play to one’s strengths he supposed. He recalled the other bird with instructions to lead Thor to him.

_I have a better idea. It involves me and Thor kicking your ass until you cry for mercy._

His adversary hissed and took a step towards him just as Thor and Fandral appeared at the top of the steps. With a wordless cry, Thor leaped down the stairs and threw his hammer. It passed straight through Tony’s head and hit the wall, leaving a radius of cracks in the stone.

_You really do fall for that every time._

Tony stepped out from the shadowed alcove directly behind the intruder and aimed a savage blow at its head, sending it staggering forward. He followed after, grabbing hold and throwing it against the far wall, where it crumpled to the ground with a deflated wheeze.  

“Was this your plan, then?” Thor said, stalking towards Tony with Fandral close at his heels. He summoned Mjolnir to his hand and raised it. “You have betrayed us all!”

_Untwist your knickers, Goldilocks. I’m not the enemy here._

A noise like a sucking chest wound emanated from the floor where the intruder lay. With a vague sense of dread, Tony realized that it was laughing. It stood and drew itself up to its full height, arms outstretched, the gauntlet now gracing its right hand. Tony’s visual feed from the bird confirmed that the display behind him was indeed empty.

_How did you…?_

Thor and Fandral rushed forward. The intruder made a backhand gesture with the gauntlet and the two warriors were swept up as if by a hurricane wind and slammed into the ceiling. They fell to the floor and lay half-covered in a pile of crumbled masonry.

With a fluid motion born of long muscle memory, Tony summoned one of his knives to his hand and cast it towards the intruder, but it never hit its mark. He stumbled backwards into the wall feeling as if a fistful of fire had struck him in the gut. Avian eyes showed a growing stain of crimson spreading out from the hilt of the knife he’d thrown, now buried deep into his own flesh. His legs gave out from under him and he slid down the wall in a heap.

Again the sound of that horrible laughter echoed in the corridor.

“Fool. Did you think your childish tricks were any match for me when I now wield _this_?”

The intruder held up the gauntlet and the embedded gems flashed purple, green and yellow in the dim light. Tony tried to move away as the intruder now crept towards him, but his limbs were no longer under his control and his visual feed began to fade in and out. The last thing he saw was a claw-like hand reaching for him.

***

Fandral groaned and tried moving his legs, but to no avail. Beside him, Thor fared little better, with dazed eyes and blood dripping thick from a deep gash in his temple. They were both trapped beneath the fallen stones. As Fandral again tried to free himself, a flicker of movement caught his eye. The dark figure of their assailant crouched down, about to seize upon Loki’s prone body.

“It is time for your reckoning, traitor.”

“No!” Thor bellowed, struggling to free himself from the rubble.

Their assailant’s outstretched hand recoiled, though not by the power of Thor’s command.

“You are not the one I seek,” it hissed. “Who are you? Show yourself!”

The palm of the gauntlet passed before Loki’s face, and for the briefest flicker of a moment the bearded visage of another man was revealed.

“Odin’s bones!” Fandral swore under his breath. So he _had_ been telling the truth all this time.

“No matter,” the creature said, rising up. “He already has His sights set on earth, and I am certain we shall find our treacherous _ally_ holed up there like a viper in its den.”

Their mysterious foe gestured with the gauntlet and a narrow portal of light materialized. Sparing the two warriors a final look from beneath its deep cowl, it stepped into the light and disappeared.

Thor uttered a feral growl as he finally kicked himself free and ran straight for Tony. He fell to his knees before the lifeless man and quickly tore a strip of fabric from his cape, wrapping it around the hilt of the knife and applying pressure to the wound. All the while, Fandral struggled to remove the final stone that had his own ankle pinned.

“Take him to the healers,” Thor commanded as Fandral finally limped over to join him. “I must inform Odin of what has occurred.”

Fandral nodded and gathered Tony up into his arms as Thor bolted from the vault.

***

He made his way as quickly as he could back to the palace and handed off his charge to the healers. After they had taken the wounded man to an inner chamber to begin their work, Fandral was left alone to reflect on the dire situation that all of Asgard and beyond now faced. They should have been able to stop this. He and Thor had arrived in time, thanks in large part to the magpie that had led them straight and true through the vault’s maze of corridors. But their luck had soon failed them. Icy tendrils of fear chilled his heart once again, just as they had when he first caught sight of the cloaked and cowled stranger standing near the Infinity Gauntlet.

Heedless of the terrible threat that the stranger posed, Thor had aimed his first blow at Loki. Whether it was a tactical miscalculation or simply filial rage that had blinded him, Fandral chose not to judge. All that was certain was that an unknown threat now possessed the most powerful weapon in Odin’s armory. There was nothing for them to do but regroup and plan a strategy to recover the gauntlet. But where should they even begin their search? And how could they ever hope to defend against it?

The door opened, stirring Fandral from his dire musings. The healers had finished their ministrations, and he was finally allowed to enter the chamber where the man who was not Loki lay deep in a peaceful, reparative slumber. Though a bit pale and drawn, he was alive and would thankfully remain so. Fandral leaned against the wall to ease the weight off of his sore ankle, and waited.

Before long he was joined by Odin and Thor, and together they kept vigil over their unfortunate guest until morning.


	13. Chapter 13

Tony woke in a bed that was not his own. The sound of running water and distant music carried in through a nearby window. He stirred and tried to open his eyes but only managed a lot of squinting and blinking at first, making everything in the room meld together in a hazy golden blur. When his vision finally cleared, the haze resolved into Thor’s face, beaming with the warmth of a thousand summer days at the foot of his bed.

“He wakes!” Thor called.

Odin stepped into Tony’s line of vision and stood beside Thor. Fandral was there, too, but remained a respectable distance behind the royal duo.

Tony passed a hand over his face, as much to wipe away the lingering sleep as to check that all of his bonds had indeed been cut. Although there was nothing preventing him from speaking now, oddly enough – and possibly for the first time in his life – he found he had nothing to say. It was Odin who first broke the long silence between them.

“Tony Stark,” he said. “Words cannot adequately express my regret that you have been so ill-treated, when, from what my son has told me of your deeds, you should have been among Asgard’s most honored guests. A thousand apologies will never erase the suffering we have caused you. However, for what it is worth, I am truly sorry.”

Before Odin had finished his little speech, Tony remembered something he wanted to say. But when he opened his mouth all that came out was a croaking whisper, and his three visitors just looked at him quizzically. He waved Thor over. When he drew near, Tony leaned forward and grabbed hold of his tunic, pulling him close.  Then he spoke very clearly and distinctly, those four little words he’d been dying to utter ever since all of this first began.

“I. Told. You. So.”

He let go and sank back into his pillows.

That’s right; he wasn’t above playing the ‘I told you so’ card. But the grim look on Thor’s face as he rose almost made him feel a pang of remorse.

Almost.

“You did, indeed,” Thor conceded. “And I did not listen. As my father said, apologies will never be enough. We owe you an enormous debt, and if there is anything I can do for you – whatever the cost – I will do it as wergild for our treatment of you.”

“Better believe I’ll hold you to that, big guy,” Tony said, settling in with his hands behind his head. “And you could start by getting me some food.”

“Of course!” Thor’s face brightened. “Whatever you desire shall be brought to you.”

“Um, okay, how about all of it?”

Chairs were brought for Odin and company and a large tray filled with food was placed before Tony on the bed. He sat up, reaching first for the lone golden apple set on a silver platter in the middle of the tray. He took one bite and his eyes fluttered shut. Better than sex. Way better. Like an explosion of life its very self in his mouth.

“Oh, oh yeah,” he moaned. “That’s what I’m talking about.” He was only dimly aware of the obscene noises he continued to make as he slurped and munched away.

The others sat, stoic and patient, until he had devoured all but the seeds and turned to the other, less orgasmic fare before him. Thor then proceeded to fill him in on what had happened in the vault after he’d blacked out, how he’d been brought here to the infirmary to be healed, and how the Frost Giant invasion had been handily thwarted under the leadership of the valiant Volstagg. Tony intermittently supplemented the story with his own experiences and observations, until finally the quartet were all playing from the same sheet of music. 

“So, the Infinity Gauntlet,” Tony said through a mouthful of food, “it’s obviously a weapon of some sort, right? On a scale of one to apocalypse, how bad is it?”

“Whosoever wields the gauntlet has the power to control all laws of the known universe,” Odin replied. “Time, space, life, death…even the very nature of reality.”

Tony swallowed hard. “So what you’re saying is, it’s not bad…it’s the worst. We’re skipping the Mayor and Adam and going straight into Buffy fights evil itself territory.”

They all stared blankly at him.

“We’re doomed, is what you’re saying.”

“Not quite,” Odin said. “The gauntlet still lacks four of the Infinity Gems. Without them, the wearer cannot access its full power. It contained only the Soul and Reality gems prior to its theft.”

“I appreciate your optimism. What about the others? Do we know where they are?” Tony asked.

“We believe that Loki’s staff may have contained the Mind Gem,” Thor said. “What has become of it?”

Tony shrugged and helped himself to some more roasted meat. “Some top secret SHIELD facility that doesn’t officially exist, I would guess.”

“Based on your account of what happened in the vault, the thief may have used the power of the Space Gem to enter. If that is so, he will be able to breach their facility just as easily,” Odin said.

“So best case scenario is that Time and Power are still up for grabs.” Tony paused, deep in thought. “He spoke of another. _He_ has unfinished business with Loki… _he_ has his sights set on earth. I think the thief was merely a lackey, a middleman. _He_ is the one we really need to worry about, whoever he is.”

“You seemed to know something about him,” Fandral said. “Is there anything that you can tell us?”

“Not much, just some residual images from Loki’s grand adventures haunting my dreams every night. What happened to him after he fell, anyway?”

“We do not know,” Thor said. “We assumed he was dead.”

“Did you even look for him?” Tony asked sharply.

“He was beyond Heimdall’s sight, if not dead then utterly beyond our reach.”

Tony let it go with a shrug. It wasn’t even his fight to have, so he didn’t know why it should have irked him as much as it did.

“All I can tell you,” he said, changing the subject, “is that the thing pulling Sleestak’s strings is crazy powerful, and I wouldn’t trust him wielding a melon baller let alone the gauntlet. There’s no knowing when he’ll get the rest of the gems or if he already has them.” Tony wiped his mouth with a napkin and pushed his plate away. “We have to get back to earth to warn SHIELD and see if we can get ahead of whatever these two have planned. I’ll work with Foster to get the array up and running.”

“And what would you have us do?” Thor asked.

“What you do best,” Tony said. “Muster up an army and get ready for a fight.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and got up.

Thor put out a hand to stop him. “Surely you should rest.”

Tony brushed him off. “Later. We’re short on time as it is. Oh, and hey, I guess I don’t need these anymore.” He gave his arms a shake and the cuffs around his wrists reverted back to the rags he’d tied in their place.

“How did you do that?” Thor wondered.

Tony smirked. “A magician never gives away his secrets. Let’s just say ‘basic principles of physics’ and leave it at that.”

Odin and Thor filed out of the room, and Fandral stepped aside with a slight bow to let them pass. Tony approached him and put out his hand.

“Hey man, sorry if I caused you any grief.”

“No indeed,” Fandral said, smiling and grasping him by the wrist. “It is I who am sorry that I could not help to right this injustice earlier.”

“I know you did what you could,” Tony said. “Hey…you should come to a party at my place in Malibu some time. I have a few super model friends who would _love_ to meet you. Have you ever thought about doing something different with the, uh…” he gestured indicating the man’s goatee. “Maybe update the look a little bit?” He placed a hand in the middle of Fandral’s back as they walked, following Odin and Thor out of the infirmary.

***

Once they’d met up with Jane, Tony insisted that they go straight out to the Bifrost site. Jane rode out with Thor again, but Tony declined the offer of a steed of his own. He much preferred soaring flight to saddle sores and besides, he didn’t know how much longer he was going to be able to do the bird trick. Might as well get his money’s worth while he was here.

Heimdall greeted them at the site when they arrived. After returning to Loki’s form, Tony transformed his Asgardian threads into his own familiar work clothes: jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and some Vans.  He and Jane dove right into problem solving mode, while Thor and Heimdall were relegated to the role of not-so-attentive audience a few feet away.

Tony stood with his arms crossed, contemplating the equipment setup and the symbol-filled circle it surrounded. “So how does it work? Readers Digest version.”

“Well, ever hear of the Tree of Yggdrasil?”

“Yea…nope.”

“It’s what they called it in Norse legends and still call it here in Asgard. Basically it’s a region of time-space that connects what they call the nine realms. And it’s lousy with wormholes. Well, the potential for wormholes, anyway. They’re constantly popping in and out of existence, all along the “roots” of the tree. The array taps into that potentiality and ‘grabs’ a wormhole as it’s formed and keeps it open. In theory, anyway. We haven’t been so successful with that last part.”

As she spoke she became more and more animated, and her words came nearly as quick as her thoughts. This was a woman who was definitely following her bliss.

“There’s a second array back on earth around another one of these medallion thingies,” she continued, barely pausing for breath. “They seem to have worked as a homing beacon or something for the Bifrost when it was operational, marking the destination end of the wormhole, so we just built off of that. The array _there_ also acts as an amplifier and helps the array _here_ pick the right wormhole – one that happens to be heading in the right direction. If…any of that makes sense at all. I know I’m babbling.”

“I follow you,” Tony reassured her. “So why do you think the throat won’t stabilize?”

She threw her hands up. “I don’t know. The Casimir effect that the array produces _should_ be enough. The equations worked out, but the prototype tests both failed.”

“Okay, I’ve heard enough. Fire this puppy up and let’s run some diagnostics.”

Jane powered up the array. Once the energy stream appeared Tony held his hands up just outside of it, palms outward. He could feel the instability, a cacophonous discord of vibrations with just the barest hint of melody buried underneath.

“Okay, the negative dilation field is there, it’s just not strong enough. We need to conjure us up some of that erotic exotic matter, baby. Boom chicka bow wow.”

Jane heaved a sigh of frustration. “I’ve been trying to avoid dealing with exotic matter since, you know, its existence defies the laws of physics and all.”

Tony stepped away from the stream and turned to her. “You’re coming at this from a general relativity perspective. Think smaller – ultra microscopically smaller.”

Jane scowled at him. “I’m an astrophysicist; of course I’m coming at it from a general relativity perspective. And quantum mechanics is fundamentally incompatible with GR at that scale. You know that.”

“Okay, then think more musically.”

“Superstring theory? It’s a pretty story, but there’s no observable evidence for it yet,” Jane countered.

“Maybe not, but trust me, it’s true. The universe is made of music. I’ve heard it sing. This asshole,” Tony said, pointing to his face, “has the ability to hear it sing. How unfair is that?”

“So assuming, for the moment, that it is true; how does that help?”

“We just need to find the corresponding resonant vibrational pattern and boom – exotic matter.”

“Oh, is that all?” Jane laughed. “How exactly do you propose we do that?”

“Leave it to the maestro.”

Tony pushed up his sleeves and turned to the stream again. It was tricky; he’d never gone this deep before, trying to manipulate the most fundamental basis of all matter. He closed his eyes and dropped down, down below the rippling pool to a place that was ancient and ageless, where the elemental notes of the universe vibrated along one-dimensional strings of infinite length. Like a virtuoso playing arpeggio scales, he plucked the strings to find just the right note. Slowly the discord melted away, resolving into a deep, sonorous hum that traveled up his arms and reverberated throughout his ribcage.

When he looked over at Jane, she was wide-eyed and gaping at her screen.

“Oh my god! It’s stabilizing,” she said.

Tony grinned and stepped back. “You see? It was the flux capacitor. I told you. Now just lock in those settings and guard them with your life. I won’t be able to do this again once I’m back to…me. ”  

“Now for the real test,” Jane said. “My team on the other side will get this and send it back, if they haven’t given up on me and gone home, that is.” She stooped down and grabbed the sensor ball out of a small metal case, walked over to the stream and gracelessly lobbed it in. She grabbed Tony by the arm and pulled him backwards a few paces. The ball disappeared and the stream winked out, but this time with no explosion. Thor and Heimdall stirred, suddenly interested, and walked over to join them.

They waited.

The stream appeared again, but just for a moment. When it was gone, the sensor ball lay right in the middle of the medallion. Jane picked it up and rotated it to reveal a white Hello-My-Name-Is sticker, upon which was written one word in neon green sharpie.

_WOOHOO!_

“Great!” Tony said, clapping his hands together. “Saddle up, boys and girls. We’re going home.”

Jane blocked him as he was about to walk into the center of the circle.

“No! First we need to download the sensor data to see if any of the readings exceeded the survivability thresholds, then do human analogue tests…”

“We don’t have time for all of that!” Tony snapped, breaking away from her. “We’re on a doom-driven deadline here, Foster.”

Jane was unmoved. “I know that. But I for one do not want to be squeezed into a singularity or smeared across a light year of space. We’re crunching the numbers first.”

She was right, of course. He certainly didn’t want a repeat of his last experience in the stream either, but the delay still irked him. Might as well make the best of it.

“Fine,” Tony relented. “While you do that, I have a little favor to ask Thor.”

Thor perked up, as if he were glad to finally be of some use to them. “You have only to name it.”

“I need you to settle an age-old question, one that’s been burning in my mind practically since the moment I got here.”

Thor looked at him expectantly.

“Do gods poop?”

Thor laughed but Jane just started backing away. “Oh, I really don’t need to hear this. Please don’t ruin the magic, Tony.”

“Come on, everyone poops. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and the question will probably answer itself in a few hours after that epic lunch I just ate. No, seriously Thor, I simply will not rest until you show me an Asgardian toilet.”

While he was talking, Jane put her hands over her ears and made “lalala” noises as she scampered back to her laptop.

“Oh, real mature, Foster. What are you, like, twelve?”

Jane shot him a grin over the top of her screen. “Must be why we get along so well.”


	14. Chapter 14

The first thing Tony noticed when they landed on the other side of the wormhole was the heat enveloping him like a convection oven. He looked around and saw the flat, featureless brown of a mid-western desert, broken only by the components of a second array surrounding them, and a nearby truck. The sun was just starting its westward descent past noon.

“Where the hell are we?” he asked.

“New Mexico,” Jane beamed. “We made it!”

“Great,” Tony said, not really sharing her enthusiasm. “So if the initial experiment had worked, it would have dropped me in the middle of the desert?”

“Yes,” Thor responded. “And we would have been right behind you. You would not have gotten far.”

“Son of a bitch,” Tony muttered. “You know, I expect more in the way of convenience from my transporter technology.”

Two people got out of the truck and came hurrying towards them.

“Hey hey! You made it…” Selvig cut short his exuberant welcome and his broad smile faded as his eyes fell upon Loki’s form. “What’s he doing here?”

“Yeah, funny story,” Jane began. “This isn’t Loki. He’s actually…”

Without warning, Darcy shouldered her way past Jane with one arm outstretched. She went right for Tony.

“That’s for New York, you son of a bitch!” she yelled.

Tony jolted backwards when the pepper spray hit him, and then doubled over in pain.

“Ow fuck, not the eyes! I just got those back!”

Thor grabbed a hold of Darcy and explained the situation to her while Jane called to Selvig to bring her some water.

“Here, start with this.” Selvig handed her a bottle of water and she began splashing it over Tony’s face. “I have some Maalox in the truck. Lucky for you I have a sensitive stomach and a penchant for Mexican food.”

Once the burning had stopped and Tony could open his eyes again, he gave Darcy a wide berth and took a seat on the bumper of the truck. Selvig eyed him dubiously, but seemed content for the moment to believe Thor and Jane about his true identity.

“We need to find out where Loki is and then get the array over there pronto. We have an army at the ready that can help put a stop to whatever it is he’s planning,” Tony said.

“Well, that’s no secret,” Selvig said. “He’s in New York for the unveiling of the new defensive shield over Manhattan today.”

“A shield? Great. Do we know how it works? What the vulnerabilities might be?” Tony asked.

“No, it’s been very hush-hush. You know, the usual Stark Industries cloak and dagger proprietary bullshit, followed by the grand unveiling and a ticker tape parade,” Selvig said with a derisive laugh. “Oh, sorry,” he added when he remembered who he was talking to.

“No no, that’s accurate,” Tony replied. “If nothing else, I certainly know how to celebrate my successes, and Loki’s just playing the part. I guess there’s nothing really for it then. Thor and I should go on ahead to New York to do a little recon. Foster, you get in touch with SHIELD and let them know what’s going down. Arrange transport with them for you and the array to New York. Once we figure out what we’re dealing with, we’ll let you know where to set it up.”

Tony got up and looked around. “I, uh, don’t suppose we could hit you up for a ride to the airport first? And would you mind if we stopped at Five Guys or something on the way? Do you have Five Guys around here? I could really go for a cheeseburger.”

“It would be faster to fly,” Thor said.

“Well yeah, that’s what I was suggesting.”

Thor twirled Mjolnir in his hand and smiled.

“What, you want me to climb on your back and just hold on for dear life? No thanks. I’ve seen how you fly that thing,” Tony said with a nod towards the hammer.

“We have no time for your arguments, Loki!” Thor said.

Tony looked at him and cocked his head.

“My apologies, Stark. I did not mean…”

“Yeah, it’s weird, I know. I caught sight of myself in a mirror this morning and almost had a coronary.”

“Thor’s right,” Jane said. “From what you told us, we really don’t have any time to spare.”

Tony glared at her. As much as he enjoyed flying, he really preferred being his own pilot. But with no suit and the air speed velocity of a magpie being what it was, he didn’t have much of a choice.

“Okay, fine,” he grudgingly relented. “Trying to get you and the magic hammer through a TSA screening would be a nightmare anyway.” He wrapped his arms around Thor’s shoulders and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Do not let go,” Thor warned.

“Thanks for the tip, Top Gun. Let’s just get this bird off the ground”

***

After a harrowing, though thankfully short, flight they arrived at Stark Tower. Or the Avengers Tower, judging by the new logo. He was pleased that the rebuild had gone more or less according to the plans he had started drawing up before Freaky Friday happened. At least, it seemed that way from what he could tell from the outside.

He took in the mostly intact city scape as they approached the roof of the tower. There was scaffolding and construction work going on here and there, but only slightly more than was usual for any given day in New York. Almost everything in the vicinity of the Chitauri battle had been repaired and rebuilt, though many of the buildings still bore scorch marks and other scars. How long had he been gone, anyway? Didn’t seem like a day over an eternity.

A line of black Mercedes and other limos stretched in front of the tower, no doubt belonging to the various federal and municipal dignitaries who had turned out for the grand unveiling. He directed Thor to land outside of the penthouse and not the front door. It probably wasn’t wise to crash Loki’s little party in his current form.

He took a deep breath of New York air, only slightly tinged with the smell of human industry and car exhaust this high up.

“Well, I’m back,” he muttered. “Now let’s see what Lobelia’s done with the place.”

Thor’s landing on the Iron Man pad was a bit rough…for Tony, anyway. He let go as they touched down and stumbled forward gracelessly a few steps while Thor strode smoothly on.

“Whoa ho ho…well that was…let’s not ever do that again, okay?” Tony said as he tried to find his land legs again. Thor was already at the glass door leading into the penthouse, shielding his eyes to look inside.

“No one is about. How shall we enter?” he asked.

“I never lock this door,” Tony said. He pulled the handle, but it remained shut fast. “But apparently Loki does. Paranoid much?”

Tony looked at his reflection in the glass. Jeans and a t-shirt just didn’t seem appropriate for his homecoming, so he transformed them into a bespoke Caraceni instead. He smoothed the lapels of his jacket and turned to Thor.

“How do I look?”

Thor glanced at him. “You look presentable.”

“Presentable? Is that all?”

Thor turned and regarded him fully. “The cut of your suit enhances your manly physique. The cloth from which it is cut rivals even the finest linen woven from Frigga’s loom. Your alabaster skin…”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Ixnay on the inskay, Orthay.”

Tony considered his reflection again. “You know, I do like the height but I’m not really feeling this hair.”

“Stark?”

“Yeah?”

“How are we to enter?”

Tony paused, considering. “Well, you could just use that mighty hammer of yours, but I’d hate to have to replace this glass again. How about we wait for JARVIS to alert the welcome wagon.”

They didn’t have long to wait.  The welcome wagon, in the always elegant form of Pepper Potts, emerged from the elevator doors on the far side of the room and came hurrying towards them. About ten paces away she stopped, a look of uncertainty creasing her brow. Tony’s heart fluttered and jumped like a meth-addled magpie at the sight of her. He smiled and waved. Thor smiled and waved, too. They must have looked like a couple of deranged Disney princes.

Pepper cocked her head and stared at them for a moment before slowly walking towards the door. She punched a code into the keypad and slid the door open, then stood aside to let them in.

Everything he had rehearsed in his head in preparation for this moment left him. He bounded towards her, blurting out, “Pepper, it’s me, Ton…”

Before he could even get the words out, Pepper grabbed him by the lapels and kissed him full on the lips. The kiss was…well he would have liked to have said it was everything he had been imagining and more, but really it was just awkward. Like, fifty shades of awkward. Pepper must have felt it, too. She opened her eyes and stared at him for a few seconds, before stepping away and wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

“Wow, that was…” Pepper said, eyes wide.

“Yeah, I know…” Tony said.

“…really weird.”

“Yeah, totally weird.”

“Sorry, I just…”

“I know.”

“…can’t with you looking like…”

“Yeah, I get it. No worries. “

They stood gazing at each other, completely oblivious to the world and everything in it, until Thor cleared his throat. They both startled and looked at him.

“How did you know this was Stark?” he asked.

“Oh, a woman always knows.” She smiled and began walking back towards the elevator doors, turning to beckon them with one finger to follow her. “Come on. You’re just in time for the party, boys.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second story in the series, _King of New York_ , deals with Loki's adventures at the head of Stark Industries, and is currently in progress.


	15. Bonus Art!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bonus art work commissioned from the lovely and talented [](http://under-base.tumblr.com/>under_base.</a>)

 

 

Seven for a Secret - Tony with his magpies.

 


End file.
